


Somewhere You Exist

by leyley09



Series: Somewhere You Exist [1]
Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dance Dance video, First Kiss, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Frottage, Happy Ending, I promise about the happy ending, M/M, Magic, Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-Hiatus (Fall Out Boy), Semi-Canon Compliant, literal alternate universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-07-03 23:54:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 12
Words: 38,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15829506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leyley09/pseuds/leyley09
Summary: The last time someone told him not to worry, he ended up in a parallel universe.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~How did they get two versions of the band into the Dance Dance video? I'm so glad you asked.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Someday I am going to learn to stop saying "you know, someone should write -----" because inevitably it ends up being me who writes that thing.
> 
> Many thanks to [scarredsodeep / shark-myths](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarredsodeep/profile) and [ChelseaIBelieve](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChelseaIBelieve/profile) for their encouragement, their editorial assistance, and their lovely art which you will see sprinkled through upcoming chapters and my tumblr posts. Everyone in the world should be so lucky as to have these two as friends. <3

It’s not completely uncommon to see Pete with a book while they’re traveling. They spend a lot of time stuck in moving vehicles, after all, and you can really only spend so many hours playing video games before you go blind.

It is, however, weird enough to notice when the book looks to be a thousand years old.

“It’s not a thousand years old, Trickster, or I wouldn’t be able to read it.” (The ‘duh’ goes unsaid.)

It’s soft-bound, covered in what might be leather. The paper is thick and unevenly cut, though the text is printed rather than hand-written. From what Patrick can see over Pete’s shoulder, it does look like English, though not the kind of English Patrick is familiar with. Nothing he can see makes any sense. It almost looks like poetry, the way it’s laid out, but nothing appears to rhyme.

“It claims to be a spell book,” Andy says from the kitchenette.

“A spell book,” Patrick repeats flatly.

“Yeah, like for magic and shit. This one’s for finding lost possessions.”

“You know there’s no such thing as magic, right? Pete?”

Pete frowns at him. “Don’t be unimaginative, Patrick. Just ‘cause you’ve never seen it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

He snaps the book shut, waving away a puff of dust, and stomps off to the bunks.

Andy and his bowl of cereal take his place on the couch. “He found it in that thrift store the other day.”

“Okay…”

“I know you were wondering. Thought I’d save you the trouble of asking.”

“Oh.” Patrick taps his fingers on his leg for a beat, two, three… “You don’t think--”

“It’s just a book, Patrick. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

 

****

 

“Wouldn’t worry about it?!” Patrick shrieks - yes, shrieks, shut up. In this circumstance, shrieking is a valid communication option.

He fell asleep last night in a slightly cramped bunk on their tour bus as it rolled through some place flat and covered with corn. (He doesn’t always know where anymore.)

He woke up this morning wedged into a back seat of a van he didn’t recognize in clothes he’d never seen before. Only the fact that all 3 of his bandmates looked as confused upon waking is saving him from a full mental breakdown.

There was quite a bit of yelling and confusion, until he noticed that Pete was being suspiciously quiet. The asshole looked almost pleased, in fact.

‘Pleased’ was a mild word for it, once he started explaining there was this spell he’d found last night, can they believe it - magic is real!

So yes, he’s shrieking. He’s also throwing things and taking his panic out on everyone within a five-foot radius.

“We don’t know _where_ we are, we don’t know _when_ we are, we don’t even know _who_ we are!”

“Actually,” Joe pipes up from where he’s been digging through the detritus around the front seats. “I believe we’re a band called Coral Fixation _._ ”

“Coral Fixation? That’s even stupider than Fall Out Boy.”

“Not helping, Andy!”

“Patrick, everything looks perfectly normal. This is a van just like the one we used to have, just a different color. This looks like every rest area on every interstate in North America. That car over there has plates from North Dakota. Wherever we are, whenever we are, I don’t think it’s that different from where we came from.”

Patrick really wishes someone else would take this fucking seriously. This is a Major Problem. Why is he the only one panicking?!

Pete sidesteps Patrick gingerly to take a lurid green flyer from Joe. “Oh, hey, we’ve got a website. Let’s see what we’re like!”

Unfortunately, wherever (or whenever) they are, they are completely without internet-enabled phones. They find a single silver phone of an unrecognized brand in a backpack that absolutely must belong to Pete, based on the contents - three partially-eaten bags of Cheetos, two cans of silly string, four pairs of headphones (none of which are likely to work), ticket stubs, several comic books, six different colors of sharpies, some kind of lotion you can put on tattoos, red electrical tape, a bunch of unlabeled keys, and an unfortunate number of guitar picks (at the bottom under everything else so he can never find one when he needs one) - and the fact that it’s covered in sequins.

There are contact entries for “Andy”, “Joe”, and “Ricky”, which makes Joe giggle. No last names, which is less helpful. There are a ridiculous number of equally useful entries ranging from “Mom” (who may or may not be Pete’s mom) to “Tall guy from Balltown” (which is a place Patrick remembers visiting in the past because Pete would _not_ shut up about it).

Andy remembers there are usually maps at rest areas just before Patrick tries to get his hands on Pete. According to the ‘You Are Here’ map, they are parked along I-80 between Omaha and Des Moines. There’s a town about an hour away that looks big enough to have a decent-sized library, which should be open since Pete’s phone says it’s Tuesday, October 7, 2003.

 

****

 

Patrick’s somehow lost almost a year of his life at a random whim of Pete Wentz, and he is not happy about it. He could continue yelling, but instead he spends the entire drive to the library looking at the flyer Joe found (and also his throat kind of hurts now). It was printed for a show in August, somewhere in Idaho. Their band’s name is large and in a ridiculous font, centered over a photo of them, but it doesn’t look like any photo of them Patrick’s ever seen (no matter how much like themselves they actually look).

He likes to avoid being front and center of their photo shoots whenever possible, prefers to have all of them displayed equally. This Patrick does not seem to share those feelings. This Patrick is not only front and center but also massive in the foreground of the photo. The rest of the guys are arranged about the background at varying distances: Pete closest behind him to his left, Joe a couple feet further back to his right, Andy behind Joe and nearly out of frame. Whoever took this picture was an idiot. Whoever approved this photo was a jackass. (He hopes it wasn’t him.)

 

****

 

The library is open. It’s not particularly big, but it does have a handful of computers. They only get thirty minutes of access at a time, and there’s only one computer free, so they decide to start with who the fuck they are.

Coral Fixation plays a very similar type of music to Fall Out Boy, songs that almost sound familiar in the brief snatches Andy plays. According to their website (which is horribly designed), they’re ‘on tour’ - crisscrossing the middle of the US over the course of the last few months playing anywhere that will have them. Their last show was last night in Omaha. The next show is Saturday night - in Wilmette, of all fucking places. According to the notes “P” has left on that entry, it’s a high school dance, tickets limited to students (“sorry dudes, not our call”).

Andy picks the “Bios” section next, and Patrick is officially having a panic attack now.

 

**_Members:_ **

_Andrew Harrison_

_Rick Schafer_

_Joseph Tessler_

_Peter Williams_

 

****

 

Outside in the parking lot, Patrick is trying not to hyperventilate. (It is not going well.)

“How can we not exist when we exist? Another universe, okay, fine, but it has to be one where everything is the same except our names?! What the fuck kind of spell did you do?!”

When he starts towards Pete with obvious violence in his eyes, Joe finally steps in.

“First, we don’t know that everything is the same. All kinds of shit could be different. Second, let’s not murder Pete yet, okay? We might need him to get back.”

Andy sneaks up behind him while he’s daydreaming about seeing his guitar collection again. “Here’s what I learned while Patrick was having his meltdown. There are people named Andy Hurley, Joe Trohman, Patrick Stump, and Pete Wentz in this universe. Only ‘Pete’ and ‘Joe’ have pictures online, and they look alarmingly like you guys but also not like you guys, it’s weird. For one thing, they’re all in high school, the same school for that matter, so the ages aren’t right.”

“High school where?” Pete pipes up.

“Some school in Wilmette.”

“Wait, wait -- Aleda E. Lutz High School?”

“Yeah, how’d you know, Pete?”

“Because that’s where we’re playing on Saturday.”

 

****

 

Coral Fixation’s songs are even more similar to theirs once Patrick hears them all the way through. There’s just one album, eleven songs. The labels and track listing on all the cd cases are clearly homemade. The front label just says CORAL FIXATION and “Flight of the Stars”. The track list on the back looks like every ridiculous song title Patrick has vetoed in the last few years.

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/55345445@N04/44334419411/in/dateposted/)

There are two large cardboard boxes of the cds wedged into the back of the van, along with the bare bones equipment set up Patrick remembers from when they were first starting out. Neither box of cds is quite full; clearly they just grab whichever one is closest when they have a chance to sell a few.

Patrick unearths a portable cd player and a tangled set of headphones in the side pocket of the van, tries to make himself comfortable, and starts listening to his own music. Sort of.

He’s on his second time through when someone gently nudges his arm. He peeks through his lashes to see Pete next to him, picking at a loose thread on the seam of his orange jeans. (Pete’s ridiculous clothes appear to be a universal constant.)

“What.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh?”

“I didn’t mean-- this isn’t--” Pete stumbles to a halt, rubbing at his eyes in frustration. “I’m just really sorry, Trick.”

He looks miserable. And Patrick knows that he doesn’t usually intend to do most of the stuff he ends up doing. He just doesn’t always anticipate the results of his decisions.

“I know, Pete.”

“Patrick?”

“Yeah?”

“What are we going to do?”

“I really have no idea.”

 

****

 

It’s an excellent question, really. What are they going to do? They’ve been driving towards Chicago because the band they apparently are has a show in a few days. But they have no idea what the plan is. Do they have a place to stay lined up already? Is greater Chicagoland still home to these people?

“Um, guys?” Joe interrupts Patrick’s thoughts. “We’re getting kinda low on gas.”

“Do we have any money?” Andy asks from the passenger seat.

A search of the van reveals a manila envelope full of cash in a backpack that also contains Andrew Harrison’s wallet. There’s several hundred dollars carefully stacked by denomination in rubber-banded piles. There’s also a tiny notepad that has been used to track their expenses for quite a while, not just this tour.

“Looks like we’re saving up to record again,” Pete announces after flipping through it. He turns to Patrick. “Are we good enough for that?”

“We sound like us, just playing songs we haven’t written,” Patrick says distractedly, passing over the cd player. He leans up between the front seats. “So we can get gas whenever we need to. We also need to know more about this band, who we are, how we perform.”

“How are we supposed to do that?”

“Andy, did you look up, uh, band-us earlier?”

“No. We’ll need to find somewhere else with internet access so we can look us up.”

They make it to Des Moines, which looks like the Des Moines Patrick vaguely remembers. Joe pulls into a gas station with a sizable mini-mart. Pete heads for the snacks. Patrick and Andy head for the counter. The bored clerk is happy to lend them the phone book. They note down the main branch of the library and a couple cyber cafes, just in case.

Gas tank filled and snacks replenished, they head for the library.

 

****

 

Patrick cannot be trusted to remain calm in a library today, Andy declared as he parked the van. He should stay outside while the rest of them do the research. Joe had agreed but then volunteered to stay with him.

“I need to hear this music if I might have to play it.”

Pete was conspicuously silent.

So an hour and a half later, he and Joe are on their third time through _Flight of the Stars_ , trying to play along without really being able to hear their instruments. Patrick’s honestly less worried about the music than he is the lyrics.

Coral Fixation’s lyrics are different from theirs, of course, but they aren’t just different in a literal sense. Some of them are also very different in theme. They’re angrier for one thing. And not just angry at one person like some of Fall Out Boy’s songs are. These songs are angrier at everything - an unidentified someone, parents, authority figures, the government, the world in general it seems. Patrick’s tempted not to bother with those. There is this one song that he really, really likes, and a couple of others that are decent enough.

“You think we can throw some of _our_ songs into a set? I can’t learn this whole album before Saturday.”

“I guess so. Maybe some other covers or something, stuff we already know. It’s not like these kids are there specifically to see us anyway.”

“I want to do #4 for sure. #7 and #8 too, you think?”

“Yeah, I think that’s doable. And #11?”

They both jump when Andy smacks the side of the van. He and Pete climb into the front seats, each with a stack of paper.

“So we’ve learned some interesting things. Pete, would you like to start?”

“Uh, yeah, sure. Please keep in mind these guys aren’t big enough to have, like, media reports and stuff yet, and this place doesn’t have Wikipedia, so this is all from like general genre fan sites and this website that looks kinda like Myspace.” He shuffles some papers around, and Andy rolls his eyes at Patrick and Joe. “Okay, so these guys that we’re being. Peter and Joseph are from the north suburbs of Chicago. Andrew is from Milwaukee, and ‘Rick’ is from Indianapolis.”

“What?!”

Joe chokes back a laugh badly. Andy’s eyes are sparkling behind his glasses, and Pete is not even trying to hide his smile.

Patrick hates everyone in this van.

“There’s nothing wrong with Indy, Patrick.”

“Fuck off, Pete. What else.”

“We met a couple of years ago at a festival - I couldn’t find a name for it. The three of us were looking for a singer. Patrick, you were doing a solo set, and we were impressed. We started playing together a month later, recorded this album about 9 months ago. We’ve been touring pretty solidly ever since.”

“Did you find any videos of us playing?”

“Yeah,” Andy says. “It’s, uh, different.” He glances at Pete. “The dynamic is very, very different.”

Patrick frowns. “Different how.”

“Mostly you,” Pete says quietly. “You’re very, um, what’s the word, Andy?”

Andy says “confident” as Pete says “aggressive”. Joe snorts so loudly he actually winces.

“I don’t know how to describe it, Trick. This guy, he’s not one of four guys in a band; he’s the singer, and the rest of them are just backing him up. He’s-- he’s-- Andy, help me out here.”

Andy looks surprisingly sympathetic to the weird level of desperate and awkward Pete’s being. “He’s a lot more _suggestive_ than you usually are, for one thing. Really encourages the sexual tension with the crowd. And he’s set up more alone on the stage, so instead of interacting with Pete or Joe, he’s interacting with the crowd, I guess. We’ll show you a couple videos before we play if you’re really worried about it.”

Patrick’s not really paying attention to that last part. He’s more concerned about why Pete won’t make eye contact with him.

“So,” Joe interrupts the awkward silence that follows. “Patrick and I were thinking we might just do a few of these songs and a few of our songs, call them new material maybe, and then some covers and call it a show.”

“Speaking of,” Andy shoves his stack of papers at Pete and turns to start the van. “I found an email address in my wallet earlier, and I assumed since I’m carrying the money that I handle all the travel stuff too. Got into the email, and we’ve got two rooms booked at a hotel from tonight until Sunday morning.”

“Five nights in a hotel? How is this band going to have any money to record?” Joe leans across Patrick to ask.

Patrick pushes him back to his own side. “I don’t fucking care. Did you guys spend all that time finding out who we are, or did you save some time for how the fuck we’re going to get back to where we fucking belong?”

Pete waves the papers at him. “We printed out a bunch of shit, and Andy found a couple of books that looked relevant. We made copies ‘cause he wouldn’t let me just take them.” He props his feet on the dash and starts reading.

Patrick is… very unsatisfied with his life right now. He is stuck in some alternate reality in the identity of some asshole. He has no idea how to get his life back. He can’t even try to help figure it out because he doesn’t know what was done in the first place.

Joe smacks him in the thigh and hands him the cd player again. “#4 from the top?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to meet the doubles!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a lot of favorite chapters in this, y'all, but this one's great. I laugh so much.

“Peter, I told you already, I don’t want to go to this dance, okay? Let it go.”

“But Pat, you have to come. Everybody’s coming - you’ve already bought a ticket.”

“I really don’t care about the ticket. It’s going to be awkward and boring, and I have things I’d rather be doing on Saturday night than standing around in the gym being ignored by the entire student body.”

“I won’t ignore you.”

“Yes, you will. You’ll be with Jessica, you won’t be paying any attention to the rest of us.”

“But Joey, Andrew--”

“Joey will be strutting around searching for any girl who will look at him twice that he might convince to make out with him. Andrew will disappear as soon as possible to avoid having to converse with anyone and spend the whole night hiding under the bleachers or something. So I’ll be standing there all alone, making awkward small talk with people who don’t want to talk to me and wishing I was anywhere else.”

There’s no argument for that. (There can’t be; they both know it’s true.)

Pat twists his desk chair sideways so he can see Peter, sitting at the end of the bed. It’s not that he can’t argue with Peter without looking at him, but why should he?

Peter’s frowning at the floor, foot tapping while he tries to come up with another excuse. The light filtering in through the window turns him almost golden. He always looks a million times more comfortable in his own skin than Pat is.

Pat, who can buy all the right clothes and still not look right. He tugs at his jeans that just don’t quite fit. (Nothing ever does.)

He’s distracted from his wardrobe challenges when Peter looks up at him. He can never quite pinpoint what color Peter’s eyes are; today, they look like honey. (No one’s eyes should look like  _ that _ through a pair of glasses.)

“I’ll make you a deal. Come to the dance. Drive yourself, and if you hate it, you can leave whenever you want.”

Pat spins his chair around once, twice. “And you won’t argue or try to change my mind?”

“Nope.”

Around, and around, and around. “Fine.”

“Awesome!” Peter jumps to his feet at a speed that would have put Pat on his face on the floor. “C’mon, I told Joey we’d meet him at the diner.”

He follows Peter down the stairs but detours to the kitchen to leave his mom a note. Peter’s throwing his backpack into the back seat of his mom’s car when Pat comes out the front door. Peter smiles when he sees him, like he always does. It hits Pat like a Mack truck, like it always does.

(Peter’s just got one of those smiles, that’s all.)

By the time Pat’s opening the passenger door, Peter’s fiddling with the portable cd player he’s hooked up to the radio.

“Who’s this?”

“Coral Fixation. They’re playing the dance. Joey gave me their cd yesterday.”

  
  
  


“It’s not terrible.”

 

Peter just smiles to himself and pulls away from the curb.

 

****

 

Their favorite diner is in a sketchier neighborhood than Pat’s mom would approve of, but it has a lot of perks. There’s always a parking space nearby, there’s always a table (or seven) open, and there’s never anyone they know there.

Joey and Andrew are waiting at their favorite table near the ancient pinball machine. Joey’s already halfway through a plate of chili cheese fries, Andrew watching judgmentally as he shoves far too many fries into his mouth at once. There’s chili dripping onto the table as Pat slides into the booth across from them.

“You’re disgusting, Joey.” 

Joey replies, but Pat can’t understand him, what with the mouthful of fries. 

The waitress, an older lady named Kate, stops by to take their orders. They always look at the menu, like they don’t have it memorized since they’re in here three times a week, but then they always order the same thing because they’re high school students with basically no money. Only Andrew actually has a job; the rest of them have to make do with their allowances. Cheese fries and soda three times a week are the height of extravagance in that regard.

As per usual, their conversation is a mess of school gossip, Andrew and Peter arguing about comics, Joey and Pat arguing about music, everyone getting distracted by Peter’s increasingly random ‘would you rather’ questions until the bell over the door jingles an hour later.

Joey, facing the door, glances over reflexively and promptly drops his plastic cup to the table top. Fortunately for Peter, sitting across from him, it’s empty. 

But Joey’s still staring towards the door, looking rather like he’s seen a ghost. Pat glances back over his shoulder to see what horrible thing is happening over there and freezes.

Standing just inside the door is a guy who looks shockingly like Peter. His hair’s different, a bit, and he’s not wearing glasses; instead, he’s wearing the most ridiculous pair of jeans Pat’s ever seen. 

Andrew drops a piece of silverware onto the table and swears nearly-under his breath. Almost-Peter turns to look at the noise.

Pat can’t breathe.

“Oh. My. God.” Joey kicks Pat under the table with every word. “Oh my god you guys, it’s Coral Fixation. What are they doing here? Holy shit.”

Normally Pat would be kicking him back, but he doesn’t have the brainpower right now. He can’t-- how is this-- “Who?”

“The band playing the dance. Ohmygod, this is the coolest thing ever.”

Across the room, Almost-Peter is poking one of the other guys and whispering excitedly. The rest of the group turns almost as one, and--

 

“Oh my god.”

 

****

 

Patrick has a lot of experience ignoring Pete poking him. Pete is forever trying to get his attention to look at that, listen to this; it never ends. So it takes a minute for his whispers to sink in, past Joe and Andy’s debate about if anything in this place is vegan.

“Guys, guys, shit, it’s us, oh my god. Patrick!”

Patrick turns, sees Joe and Andy do the same in his peripheral vision. At this precise moment, he is arguably having the weirdest moment of his life so far (which is really saying a lot). Sitting at a booth in the far corner are this universe’s Andy Hurley, Joe Trohman, Pete Wentz, and Patrick Stump. 

Andy doesn’t look much different, really. Younger, of course, and no visible tattoos. But his hair is still a bit longer than is probably fashionable, and the glasses look nearly identical to the ones he wore when Patrick first met him. 

Joe also looks roughly the same. Patrick doesn’t recognize the name of the band on his t-shirt, but the logo looks dated. Even in this universe, he’s listening to old school music. 

The Pete and Patrick from this universe are mostly hidden by the booth, just their faces visible over the high seat backs. Patrick idly wonders if there’s a universe where Pete isn’t always the best-looking person in the room, even in glasses, before he focuses on, well, himself.

This Patrick is exactly what Patrick would have been if he hadn't gotten into the music scene so young. His glasses don’t do him any favors. Patrick can’t judge his hair or his sideburns, since his aren’t much better, but he does know they wouldn’t help this kid fit in in school.

“Holy shit, Patrick, look at you,” Pete whispers wonderingly.

That distracts Patrick enough to break the moment. He sends Pete a confused look just as Joe pushes past them, headed towards the back corner.

 

****

 

“Oh fuck, they’re coming over here, what do we do?” At another time, in another situation, the way Joey’s voice cracks at the end of that question would be hilarious. Maybe it’ll be funny later. Right now, Pat has other things to worry about, like the somehow even hotter version of Peter headed in their direction.

“Be cool,” Andrew hisses. He kicks Pat under the table, like  _ Pat’s _ the one who’s about to be weird and embarrassing.

“Hey, guys,” says an older, cooler version of Joey. “You wouldn’t happen to be Andrew Hurley, Joseph Trohman, Patrick Stump, and Peter Wentz, would you?”

Peter frowns at him. “Uh, how do you know that?” 

“Dude, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

 

****

 

This Joe is right. Pat doesn’t believe him. Or at least, he doesn’t want to. It’s too weird, too much. Andrew and Peter look just as skeptical. Joey, on the other hand, looks delighted in the whole thing.

“So, let me get this straight,” Pat glares at the other Patrick. “You guys aren’t  _ actually _ Coral Fixation. You’re a band called Fall Out Boy from another universe, and you’re actually us from that universe.”

“Yes.”

“And you got here via some magical spell.”

Patrick glares at his own Peter, who continues to stare miserably at the floor. “That’s what I hear.”

“So are you stuck here now?”

Andy shrugs. “We’re not sure yet.”

Andrew taps his fingers on the tabletop. “What happened to the band you’ve taken the place of?”

“No idea,” Andy replies.

“God, I hope they aren’t in our universe fucking everything up.” Patrick grumbles, face in his hand.

“Why do you think they’ll fuck things up?” Pete asks with a frown.

“Because they aren’t us? They’ll confuse the hell out of everyone. That guy, their singer, he’s not me, not even close.” Patrick’s voice goes up, both in volume and pitch as he talks.

“Could we maybe focus on the problem at hand?” Pat interrupts. “You’re here and you don’t know how to get home.”

“We’ll figure something out,” Andy says, far too calmly.

“While you’re doing that...are you going to play the dance?”

“Jesus, Joey,” Andrew rolls his eyes. 

“What? I was really looking forward to seeing Coral Fixation, okay? If they’re going to be here, I mean, why not?”

“We’d need to find some place to practice,” Patrick says. “We’ve been listening to the stuff, and I think we can learn at least a few of the songs before the dance.”

Joey flails around so hard he knocks his cup over, again. “You guys, my basement has plenty of space, and my parents are practically never home. You can totally practice there for, like, hours and hours.”

“Not tonight, though,” Andrew points out, moving Joey’s cup well out of his way. “You said they have that dinner party thing.”

“Oh yeah, right. Not tonight. But tomorrow after school, you’ll have plenty of time.”

“That’s really cool of you, dude.” Joe slugs him in the arm. 

“Hey, it’s nearly 6, I need to get home.” Andrew pushes Joey out of the booth. “Joey, give someone your address.”

Andy fishes a notebook out of one of the baggy pockets on his shorts. Behind him, Joe and Patrick are exchanging amused looks.

Joey rattles off his address, then Andrew drags him out of the diner. 

“Do you need to get home, too?” 

Pat flinches as Peter leans into him, breathing down his neck. “Yeah, probably should.”

“Really? Already?”

Patrick elbows Pete with a frown. 

“Yeah?” Pat says. “Homework, dinner, you know how it is.”

“See you tomorrow?” Pete asks.

“Sure?” Pat doesn’t know what his presence will add, but it’s not like he’s got anything better to do than hang out at Joey’s.

“Bye then,” Joe sort-of interrupts. “See ya.”

“C’mon, Pat.” Peter edges past the other Pete with a suspicious glare. “Let’s go.”

He follows Peter out of the dinner, not sure what to make of the conversation he can hear behind him.

“Jesus, Pete, leave that kid alone.”   


“What? I’m not doing anything!”

“Really, Patrick, I don’t know what you were expecting.”

“What?”

It’s gotten darker outside, a bit of chill to the autumn air. Beside him, Peter is frowning, glaring at the sidewalk like it insulted his mother.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure. Just-- That was weird, right?”

“Super weird.”

“Do you believe them?”

“I don’t want to, because it’s fucking crazy, right? But they look just like us, they sound just like us… Maybe it is true.”

“I guess.”

He’s quiet, almost surly on the drive back to Pat’s. He switches the music over to the radio immediately, which is a little suspicious - when Peter likes something, he listens to it until it wears out or someone (usually Pat) threatens to hurt him unless he plays something new.

“You sure you’re alright?” Pat asks, one last time, as Peter pulls the car up in front of his house. 

“Sure, Pattycakes,” Peter replies with the fakest grin Pat’s ever seen. “I’m awesome.”

“Riiiiiight, okay.” Pat shakes his head. “Call me later if you aren’t?”

Peter nods. “Will do, buddy.”

He’s frowning when he drives away.

Pat eats dinner with his family, only half paying attention to the conversation. He contributes just enough to appease his mom before he claims a lot of homework - he does have a Spanish test Friday - and escapes to his room.

He doesn’t get a lot of studying done. He’s very distracted by the idea that somewhere in town is another version of him….and another version of Peter.

 

****

 

The Indian Hill Motel looks like it had its heyday in 1967 and hasn’t bothered to put in much effort since then. It doesn’t exactly look like there’s someone being murdered on every floor or that there are obvious drug deals happening in the parking lot, but it doesn’t look a whole lot better.

Andy, being the person responsible for their reservation, goes to check them in and comes back out with actual keys - real, physical keys attached to hideously mauve leather keychains with the numbers 427 and 531 on them. 

“Here you go, Pete, room 427. Patrick, you’re with him.”

“What?”

“Is that a problem?” Andy asks, one eyebrow raised. Behind him, Joe looks disappointed.

“No? No. I just...thought it was my turn to room with you.” Or, more accurately, Joe’s turn to room with Pete.

No one looks convinced.

“Nope, it’s Joe’s turn. Make sure you lock the van when you go up.” Andy shoulders his backpack and grabs a duffel from behind the back seat. 

Joe grabs his bags, glares at Patrick, and high-fives Pete before he goes, leaving Patrick sitting in the van with a very unnaturally quiet Pete Wentz.

“I wasn’t upset that we’re sharing,” he says quietly.

“Yeah, whatever,” Pete mutters. “Don’t forget your stuff.” He slams the van door behind him. 

Patrick grabs what he supposes are his bags and follows well behind Pete as he climbs the exterior stairs.

Their hotel room is decorated in violent, conflicting shades of red. The wallpaper is a pattern that certainly hasn’t been in print since the 1970’s. If he looks at it long enough, he’s going to end up hypnotized or vomiting. The carpet looks like a bloodstained Brillo pad. The flimsy looking dresser/TV cabinet combo probably got rejected from at least a dozen garage sales before ending up here. There’s a small table and two chairs wedged into one corner. The table’s a plain, cheap fake wood, and the chairs look like they’d shatter if a bird landed on them. The bedspreads look like Jackson Pollock had a nosebleed on top of one of his paintings.

Pete’s already claimed the bed farthest from the door and locked himself in the bathroom by the time Patrick gets inside.

Super.

“Pete, I’m serious. I’m not upset that I’m sharing with you. I was just surprised because I was expecting to share with Andy.”

“Whatever, Patrick,” Pete yells through the door. “I know you guys take turns babysitting me.”

“We-- Pete-- Shit.”

He sits on the end of the bed, pulling his hat off to run his hand through his hair. “Pete, we aren’t ‘babysitting’ you.” 

“Then how come I never room with the same person twice in a row? Do you guys think I’m that irresponsible?”

“It’s not about irresponsibility, it’s about getting some fucking sleep!”   
  
  


The bathroom door creaks open an inch.

 

“What?”

“It’s just-- it’s hard sleeping in a room with you when you’re not sleeping. You don’t mean to; I know you’re trying to be quiet. But there’s a lot of moving around, lights going on and off, your phone vibrates like a train’s going by -- it’s kinda hard to sleep through all that.”

Pete shuffles out of the bathroom. He pauses at the foot of his own bed, shifting his weight from foot to foot, then launches himself at Patrick’s bed. Patrick dodges most of him, but he’s definitely going to have a bruise on his thigh from Pete’s knee.

“I’m really sorry, Trick. If you’d told me I was being loud, I’d have tried harder to be quiet. Or gone somewhere else.”

Patrick rolls his eyes. “That’s why we didn’t tell you. It’s not fair if you get stuck god-knows-where all the time just because you can’t sleep. So we rotate to keep us from being cranky, and you get to stay inside, with an actual bed when you do get to sleep. It’s as close to a win-win as it gets.”

He flinches a little as Pete wraps him up in a sort-of backwards hug, not expecting it after everything today. 

“I don’t think sleeping tonight is going to be a problem,” Pete eventually says into his shoulder blade. “It’s been a long fucking day.”

“You’re telling me.” He pats one of the hands fisted in his jacket. “Let me up, I need to brush my teeth.”

By the time he comes back from the bathroom (which possibly had a rip-off of Psycho filmed in it), Pete’s asleep on top of the covers on the bed by the door. Patrick shifts Pete’s bag from the bed to the dresser, turns off the light, and climbs into the other bed.    


It takes him slightly longer to fall asleep; it always does. But the motel is on a fairly quiet street, and the sound of Pete’s breathing is familiar and repetitive enough that he drifts off well before he expects to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't have time to mess with the html tonight, so pop over to [my tumblr](www.leyley09.tumblr.com) to see the amazing mood board scarredsodeep/shark-myths made for this chapter. It's almost as awesome as she is.
> 
> If you're looking for musical accompaniment, I definitely recommend [the Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/leyley09fic/playlist/2doPVQUf4MRrnvKhn4w05K?si=pHqPOKLyTietyu5Gg83IAA)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “This whole conversation makes my head hurt.”
> 
> “You and me both, buddy, you and me both.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello and happy Wednesday (at least where I am)! So sorry I missed our regular Tuesday appointment, but I spent all of yesterday in a car coming back from seeing the boys play Wrigley on Saturday and IT WAS AMAZING and all my people are amazing, and I was very tired last night.
> 
> I do hope this short chapter was worth waiting for, and I'll see you all next week on Tuesday night.
> 
> (also, since I am not in the mood to fight with html tonight, check out the amazing mood board for this chapter on [my tumblr](leyley09.tumblr.com) and find the accompanying [Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/leyley09fic/playlist/2doPVQUf4MRrnvKhn4w05K?si=pHqPOKLyTietyu5Gg83IAA) for even more feels)

“What are you wearing to the dance?”

“What?” Pat looks up from his algebra homework that’s due after lunch. 

“What are you wearing to the dance?” Peter repeats, more slowly this time. 

“Oh, uh, probably that suit Mom bought me for Aunt Sherry’s wedding. I’m not getting anything new just for this.”

Peter pushes aside Pat’s lunch tray to make room for his own. He kicks Pat twice trying to get his legs under the table properly. “Do you think I need to get Jessica one of those flower things?”

Pat rubs at the soon-to-be-bruise on his shin. “How the fuck should I know?”

“You know all kinds of useful stuff. You’re like my Alfred.”

“I’m your what now?”

“Alfred. You know, you’re the smart guy that provides all the backup and support so Batman can do his thing.”

“Okay, first of all, what the hell. And second of all, you’re not Batman. You’re not even close to Batman.”

“I am too! Andrew, tell Pat I’m Batman.”

“Peter, you’re not Batman.”

As Peter and Andrew continue to argue if Peter can be Batman or not, Pat goes back to his homework, pointedly not focusing on either how much he did not want to talk about Peter’s date to the dance or the weird buzzy feeling he’d gotten from Peter’s sad attempt at a compliment.

Joey elbows him. “You coming over after school?”

Why are all his friends so fucking violent. “Yeah. I’ve got to do my social studies homework, but I can hang out for a while.”

“Dude, don’t do your homework while you’re hanging out. That’s so lame.”

“Dude,” Pat mimics, “I’m more scared of my mom than of you. Do you want me to come or not?”

“Fine,” Joey sighs dramatically. “No, Peter, if anyone at this table is Batman, I’m Batman.”

“Like hell you are, Trohman!”

 

****

 

“Do you think Pete’s being weird?”

“What?”

Across the Trohman’s basement, Pete is leaning over the back of the couch, pointing out something in the textbook on Pat’s lap. Peter has taken up residence on the kid’s other side, leaning up against him while he writes in his own notebook. Ostensibly, Pete’s helping the kid with his social studies homework. Patrick’s not sure how much information is being retained though; Pat’s brain appears to have shut down a good fifteen minutes ago. 

“It just seems like he’s paying a lot of attention to other me.”

“Of course he is.” Joe shrugs. “Alternate universe or not, it’s still you.”

“What?”

“Patrick, Patrick, Patrick.” Andy bumps him with a shoulder. “Pete has been paying more attention to you than to anyone else since the day you met. You know, when you looked kinda like that.” He nods towards the other side of the room. “And you’ve gotta admit, this kid’s reactions are pretty entertaining.”

“Almost as good as yours used to be,” Joe agrees.

“Someone better fucking explain or I’m going to start punching things.”

“Just look at them for a second,” Andy says.

As he watches, Pete leans in a little further, like the three branches of government are a fucking secret. Even from several feet away, Patrick can see the goosebumps race down Pat’s neck and arm. The kid flushes lightly, just the tips of his ears and faintly across his cheekbones, until Pete touches his hand to stop him writing something and his whole face lights up like a stoplight.

Patrick knows that ruby red flush, knows it feels like a furnace under his skin, knows it disappears under his shirt collar until his whole body feels on fire.

“What. The. Hell.”

“You used to do that, all the time. Every time Pete got close, anytime he touched you. You don’t really anymore. Maybe you got used to it, built up a tolerance or something.”

“I think he misses it, actually,” Andy says offhand before abruptly changing the subject. “What do you think he was trying to do, with the spell?”

“I hadn’t really thought about it. What he was trying to do doesn’t matter nearly as much as how to reverse it.”

Joe sighs the sigh of a man who spends way too much of his time talking to idiots. “Let me see if we can explain this to you. You know when you’re sick so you go see a doctor?”

Patrick nods, waves a hand impatiently in a “get on with it” gesture.

“A good doctor doesn’t just start throwing remedies at you in the hopes that one will work. They try to figure out what’s going on so they can give you the remedy that you need. I haven’t read all the stuff Andy found at the library,” he says, reaching across Patrick to poke Andy, “but I suspect that if we don’t know exactly what Pete was trying to do, we won’t know if we’re using the right counter-spell. And who knows what would happen to us if we did the wrong thing.”

“ _ What Pete was trying to do  _ \- you mean, we can’t just ask him which spell? We have to know why he picked that spell?” 

“That’s my understanding,” Andy confirms. “Intent is important.”

“How the fuck are we going to get him to tell us that?” Pete may word-vomit in metaphor about his feelings all over their lyrics, but getting him to talk about actual feelings is exponentially harder than pulling teeth.

“Oh, there’s no ‘we’ going on here,” Joe laughs. “This one’s all you, dude.”

“What?! Why me?”

Andy and Joe’s laughter draws the attention of everyone else in the basement. Pete looks up, right into Patrick’s horrified face. Patrick watches something go terribly wrong in his face in response. He doesn’t know what just happened, but he knows it wasn’t good. 

Joey says something about pizza, and Pete disappears up the stairs behind him. Andrew goes back to the book he’s been reading.

“Seriously, why am I the one who has to do this. How is this my responsibility.”

“Because you’re the only one who doesn’t already know,” Andy says cryptically. He flicks the bill of Patrick’s hat and walks away, yelling about a pizza without cheese before disappearing up the stairs as well, Joe hot on his heels.

Well. Shit. 

Patrick’s not going up there. First off, everyone in his band already knows what he likes on his pizza. Second, he needs to practice this song again. And lastly, well, since he’s in the privacy of his own mind and willing to be a little bit honest…..he really doesn’t want to be around Pete right this second.

“I don’t understand why he keeps talking to me.”

Patrick looks up from his guitar at Pat. Poor kid looks incredibly confused. “Why who is talking to you?”

“Your Pete. He keeps sitting next to me, and talking to me, and- and, like, looking at me and stuff. It’s weird.”

“Weird?”

Pat frowns at him. “No one else pays that much attention to me.”

“That’s not true.”

“What?”

“Your Peter pays attention to you.”

Pat snorts. “Yeah, whatever. Can you make him stop?”

“If it makes you uncomfortable, I’ll ask him. But no guarantees he’ll stop; he doesn’t always listen to me.”

The kid shuffles around a little before he gives up and drops down to sit on the floor in front of Patrick. He stares at his sneakers while Patrick plays a chorus through before he speaks. “It’s not uncomfortable in the way that it’s uncomfortable when a bunch of people gang up on you in the hallway, but more like when you walk out of an air conditioned building on a hot, humid, sunny day.”

“And Pete looking at you feels like that?”

“Yeah.”

“Our Pete or your Pete?”

Pat practically gives himself whiplash looking up from the floor so fast. “What?”

“Is it just one of them?”

“I-- I-- I don’t know?”

Patrick nods. “That’s okay. You don’t have to know right this second.” He runs through the chorus a couple of times more.

“Does it feel like that for you?”

Patrick pulls his attention away from the guitar. “I’m sorry?”

“Does it feel like that for you, when he looks at you?”

Patrick blinks at the kid for a minute. “Why would it?”

The kid blinks back at him. “Huh.” He looks at Patrick for a handful of heartbeats. And then he gets up and goes upstairs without another word.

 

****

 

In the kitchen, everyone’s crowded around Joey and his grubby stack of takeout menus. Joey’s moved on from pizza to Chinese, so there’s a spirited argument going on until Andy points out that it is possible to order from more than one place. 

Andrew, Andy, and Joey go with the Chinese, leaving Pat, Peter, Pete, and Joe to debate pizza toppings. 

They’re almost done with their order when Pat remembers: “What about your Patrick? Do we need to order for him?”

“Oh yeah, we probably need one more - Pete, what does Patrick want on his pizza?”

“Thin crust, sausage and onion, make sure it’s square cut,” Pete yells, head buried in the fridge.

Joe repeats the order into the phone, then hands it off to Joey to call the Chinese place that does the tofu thing that Andrew likes.

This is by far the oddest group of people that have been in this kitchen. Pat, sort of hiding at the table in the corner, can’t remember the last time they had this many people here to begin with. It’s not a small room, but it feels very crowded.

Off to his left, Pete is sitting on Mrs Trohman’s counter, telling a story with very dramatic hand gestures. As he describes something that might be heart-shaped to Joey, Andy removes the open can of pop from his hand and sets it on the counter without interrupting the gesture at all. In roughly the middle of the room, Joe and Andrew are hotly debating the best Metallica album. Well, mostly Joe is hotly debating and Andrew is shaking his head and saying “no” a lot. 

For a second, he thinks Peter has left the room entirely, but no, he’s leaning against the archway to the dining room, practically hidden by the shadows and the unlit room behind him. He’s glaring across the room, which seems a little hypocritical of him. Pat’s seen him sit on the counter, despite Mrs Trohman’s strict rule against it, so he’s got no room to talk.

He’s daydreaming about Mrs Trohman coming home early to find an even-less-restrained bonus version of Peter sitting on her counter and the mayhem that would ensue when the chair next to him screeches painfully as it’s pulled away from the table.

“You’ve got an awfully big frown on that pretty face, Trickalicious. What are you thinking about?”

Umm. What.

“Nothing. And it’s Pat, just Pat.”

“Yeah, but everybody calls you that, that’s not special.”

This may be the weirdest conversation Pat has ever had. It’s definitely in English, but all these words, in this order and directed at him, are just not computing.

“I’m not special, so Pat works just fine.”

“Oh, Pat, no.” Pete looks like he just admitted to killing puppies. “That’s not- Pat, you’re the definition of special. How can you not know that?”

He’s probably blushing again, but he can’t help it. He doesn’t know what to say to that except to disagree again, or point out that how  _ could _ he know that when no one else has ever said so, but he doesn’t really want to have this argument at all so he says nothing.

“Hey, Pete, Andy’s being wrong about the Brewers again, go sort him out, will ya?”

“Joe, I need-”

“No, Pete, you’re uniquely qualified to handle the baseball argument. You wouldn’t want him converting any of these impressionable young minds, would you?”

Pete goes, obviously under some duress. 

“I’m sorry if he’s bothering you.”

“No, it’s not- he’s just-. It’s fine.”

“Uh huh.” Joe sounds very unconvinced.

“Just…. Why me?”

“Well, I mean, Patrick’s kinda Pete’s favorite. And you look exactly like our Patrick did when we first met him. And, well, not to like embarrass you or anything, dude, but you react just like our Patrick used to.”

“React to what?”

Joe rolls his eyes. “Pete.”

“But he said-- Never mind.”

“He said what? C’mon, dude, spill.”

“He said that it didn’t-- it isn’t the same kind of uncomfortable when Pete is around.”

Joe snorts. “That is such bullshit. Trust me, he used to know exactly what you’re talking about. All Pete had to do was walk into a room for Patrick to turn into a hot mess. I mean, he mostly expressed it by picking a fight, but whatever, he had Pete’s attention, so I guess it worked.”

“So it’s not because it’s me.”

“Well… I don’t know that I’d say that, exactly. Like, you’re just this universe’s Patrick, right? Maybe it’s not just because you look like the Patrick we’ve known for years but because you’re Patrick Stump and Pete’s predisposed to be attached to Patrick Stumps.”

“This whole conversation makes my head hurt.”

“You and me both, buddy, you and me both.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’re in a different fucking universe, and he’s still getting banned from places because of Pete Wentz.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know, it's not Tuesday. But I'm bored and I really love this chapter and I want you to have it. 
> 
> If I've managed to get the mood board embedded correctly (I think I have), you can thank [scarredsodeep](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarredsodeep) / [shark-myths](http://shark-myths.tumblr.com/) for her lovely work. (The other picture I just stole from the internet.)
> 
> As always, [tumblr](leyley09.tumblr.com) and [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/leyley09fic/playlist/2doPVQUf4MRrnvKhn4w05K?si=pHqPOKLyTietyu5Gg83IAA)

 

It’s been a long time since Patrick’s had this much time to kill. Back in their own universe, there’s always another interview, another photo shoot, another meeting, another recording session, another show. There’s a lot more hurry-up-and-wait than he expected way back when, but even still, he’s usually stuck waiting in a claustrophobic “green room” that’s rarely more than a glorified closet.

Today, instead, he’s on his second cup of coffee and wondering if he feels like another order of pancakes, since they have absolutely nowhere to be for hours.

Across the table from him, Pete and Joe are debating the merits of laying around their hotel rooms and napping all day or going out to explore what this universe’s Chicago is like. They haven’t ventured far from their hotel or the cookie-cutter neighborhood that these Trohmans live in. Enough of the road names are different that none of them are comfortable navigating, and Patrick has yet to recognize a landmark that would help. Joe’s not willing to drive the van into a city he doesn’t know, which Patrick understands, and Pete doesn’t want to drive either, mostly because he hates paying for parking. 

Patrick’s not participating in the argument, but he’s hoping that napping wins. He thinks really hard about that; everyone says he and Pete read each other’s minds, and he’d feel less selfish if Pete just happened to change his opinion.

(It doesn’t work, so the mind reading thing is clearly bullshit.)

Joe’s making some headway on the side of napping when their waitress butts in to remind them that there’s a handy train they could take to get downtown, if they don’t want to drive. She even sketches a little map of how to get to the station on Pete’s syrup-splattered place mat.

“Pete, dude, you have fun. I’m going back to the motel and crashing because I can. You going with him or with me, Patrick?”

He hates when they make him choose. Yes, he’d love to go back to bed and be lazy as hell, but he’ll also feel guilty later about making Pete spend the day alone. He’s tired, but he’s insanely curious. He does want to see this Chicago, see how it compares to  _ his _ Chicago, but he also doesn’t want Joe to feel like he’s picking Pete over him. 

Joe doesn’t even look like he cares which one Patrick chooses. He’s just curious about if he’ll have someone to hang out with later if Andy’s gone all day researching.

Pete, on the other hand: Pete cares which one he chooses. He won’t say so, not out loud, not today, not tomorrow, maybe not for months. Eventually, though, he’ll throw it at him mid-argument about something else entirely. Instead of the melody Patrick’s arguing about, Pete will want to know why Patrick never wants to spend time with him any more with this as a prime example. 

For the sake of future!him….. “I’ll go with Pete.”

Joe just nods and stands up from the table. Pete looks like he’s won a million dollars. He’s practically glowing, his excitement radiating off him in waves that must be measurable to scientific instruments. He feels them hit him like, like… _ when you walk out of an air conditioned building on a hot, humid, sunny day. _

No, no, no. Not like that. No. 

Like when you open the oven and you have to step back because the heat is just too much, that’s better. Much more accept-- more accurate. Accurate, that’s what it is.

 

****

 

There’s still a train station named Linden, and Joe is feeling magnanimous enough to drop them off. Neither of them talk much on the train until they get to what’s supposed to be Howard to change lines. The station’s labeled “Day” instead.

“I think we need a map.”   


Pete does a thing with his face that means a combination of “don’t be ridiculous” and “I know what I’m doing.” That look doesn’t inspire confidence in Patrick in their own universe, so it  _ really _ doesn’t work in a place where they don’t know what most of the streets are named.

He grabs a map while they’re waiting for their train, just to make sure this Red Line still goes where it’s supposed to. “Where do you want to get off?”

He regrets that question the millisecond it leaves his mouth.

“No, no, I know ‘anywhere you can’, for fuck’s sake.” He rolls his eyes while Pete giggles. “Let me try that again. Where would you like to disembark this train?”

Pete leans over his shoulder to look at the map. “Addison, duh. We have to start there.”

Honestly, why he even bothered to ask.

Pete trips over himself (and Patrick) getting off the train and nearly takes a header down the stairs from the platform in his excitement. Patrick’s never been quite as invested in the Cubs as Pete is, but it is nice to see a landmark he recognizes. 

The stadium isn’t open, of course, but Pete wanders semi-aimlessly around the whole thing, exuding fondness with every breath. When they hit the corner of Clark and Addison for the second time, Patrick’s filter malfunctions.

“Are we just going to lap Wrigley all day or can we go somewhere else?”

“Yeah, yeah, we can go somewhere else.”

They’ve taken two steps before Patrick figures out where they’re going. “You really think it’s still here?”

“That’s what we’re about to find out.”

It’s not. The building’s right, but instead of a cafe, it’s a liquor store. He expects that to bother Pete a lot more than it appears to.

“Food service is a tough industry, Trickster. You think the Sears Tower’s still here? What if it’s called something else, wouldn’t that be fucked up?”

It’s been a while since he and Pete hung out, just the two of them, just for fun. He’d somehow forgotten how funny Pete is, the little comments under his breath about the people walking by or the places they’re passing. He’s also forgotten how easy it is to make Pete laugh - and how that makes him feel.

It doesn’t even matter that the Sears Tower is called something else or that half the downtown skyline is wrong or that Pete can’t re-enact his favorite bit of  _ Ferris Bueller’s Day Off _ because the Art Institute doesn’t have the same paintings.

They argue about lunch until Patrick sees a Portillo’s and refuses to go anywhere else. Pete tries to rub chocolate cake in his face and laughs so hard when Patrick falls out of his chair trying to avoid it that they’re asked to leave.

They’re in a different fucking universe, and he’s still getting banned from places because of Pete Wentz.

It’s the best day he’s had in ages. 

His sides ache from laughing so much, his feet are killing him from the four thousand miles he’s walked, and he can’t remember the last time he was this…. happy.

Things haven’t been weird or wrong - back in their own world - but they’ve been so busy for months and months. He’s been so tired, and he knows everyone else has been too. Tired people crammed into small spaces does not lend itself to smooth, easy relationships. There’s no one to blame for why he and Pete haven’t spent a day like this in a long time; these things just happen, life gets in the way sometimes. He’s struck very suddenly by an urge to make sure Pete knows this was a good idea.

He stops walking rather abruptly and nearly gets walked into by a couple of cranky-looking tourists. He steps to the side, climbing up a few of the steps in front of the cathedral to be well out of the way.

Pete steps up onto the edge of the very bottom step, leaving him several inches shorter than Patrick for a change. “You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I just-- I, I wanted-- this has been a really good day, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Pete beams up at him. He reaches up and brushes some cake crumbs off Patrick’s shirt, fingertips just catching the skin above his collar.

Patrick struggles to fight off a shiver. “We should do this more often.”

“Get transported to a different universe?”

“No, asshole.” Patrick shoves him a bit, giggling as he almost loses his balance. “Hang out, just the two of us. It’s been a long time.”

Pete’s smile goes shy as he ducks his head, scuffing one shoe on the concrete. He peeks at Patrick through his eyelashes. “Really?”

“Yeah, really. Why wouldn’t I want to hang out with you?”

Pete just shrugs.

“Pete, we haven’t had a day like this in a long time just because we’re busy, not because I don’t want to hang out with you. You’re my best friend, you idiot.”

He doesn’t know how to interpret this facial expression; it’s new, at least to him. It’s something like how Pete looks at him when he’s singing or when they’re writing, just  _ more _ . It’s deeper and warmer but also darker and more intense -- and that back-away-from-the-oven feeling is back.

Pete opens his mouth to respond but is rudely interrupted by the cathedral bells. They’re loud when you’re standing right in front of them; there’s no point speaking until they stop.

“What were you going to say?”

Pete just shakes his head, looking at the time on his phone. “We need to get back.”

  
  
  
  


It’s not until they’re climbing into the van, Joe at the wheel, to go practice at the Trohman’s that Patrick remembers he’s supposed to ask Pete about the spell.

 

****

 

“So I was thinking, this report for English.”

“Yeah?”

“We just have to pick one of Shakespeare’s plays, right? It doesn’t matter which one?”

“Think so.”

“So I think I’m gonna do  _ Romeo and Juliet _ .”

Pat is not impressed. “Why?”

“Why not? It’s romantic  _ and _ morbid, what’s not to like?”

“It’s not romantic, moron. They’re too stupid to function, how is that romantic.”

“But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.”

“That’s literally the only thing you know about that play.”

“Pat, she’s the sun, the center of his galaxy. How is that not the most romantic thing you’ve ever heard?”

“First of all, the sun is the center of the solar system, not the galaxy - did you sleep through astronomy last year? And second, I don’t think people believed the sun was the center of anything when that play was written. I’m pretty sure Romeo just means she like ‘lights up his life’ or some shit like that.”

“Okay but there’s still --” Peter’s counterargument is cut off as he’s shoved into the wall of lockers they’re passing. He bounces off them and into Pat.

Pat’s not exactly surprised at the laughter from behind them. It’s Colleen and Steve, the terrors of Aleda E. Lutz High School’s less-popular students. They’re both assholes alone, but together - together, they’re like bleach and ammonia to the student body.

Anyone who’s different - doesn’t dress like they do, doesn’t talk like they do, doesn’t like the things they like or hate the things they hate, doesn’t have rich parents, doesn’t fit their shallow little cookie-cutter worldview - all those people are fair game, in their minds. Steve likes to physically bully people, to a point. In Pat’s experience, he doesn’t knock people down and beat the shit out of them like the bullies in movies, but he does like to push them, bump them -- small things to rub in that he’s bigger and stronger and doesn’t respect anyone’s personal space.

Colleen is the special kind of evil that only teenage girls seem to achieve. Sometimes, she’s almost nice - just often enough to really fuck with you. She’ll lull you into a false sense of security and then attack your biggest weakness with pinpoint accuracy, generally in front of half the student body. Sharp-tongued and dead-eyed, she supposedly keeps track of everyone she makes cry on a chart in her locker.

Today, he and Peter are lucky because they and their entourage don’t linger, shoving past like they’re so much flotsam and jetsam. 

That could have been a lot worse.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, not broken, just bruised. Assholes.”

“So, English paper.”

“Yeah! I really think you’re missing the point here, Pat, I mean, yeah, the dying isn’t ideal, but they were willing to go against their families to be together and they loved each other so much they couldn't bear to live without each other.”

“No, I know, that sounds good, but how could they be  _ that _ in love when they barely knew each other. Like, five minutes before he saw Juliet, Romeo was totally in love with someone else, then suddenly he sees her and is in love with her instead? He hasn’t even talked to her, so how can he know that?”

“It’s called ‘love at first sight’, Pat, it’s a thing, you may have heard of it.”

“Shut up, Peter, I know what it’s called. I just think it’s stupid.”

“You just wait till you fall in love, Pat. Then you’ll see.”

Pat waits until Peter’s ahead of him, walking through the door to their English class, before he rolls his eyes. It’s not like he’s going to be falling in love with anyone any time soon.

 

****

 

If a weirder group of people has ever congregated around a bunch of pizzas, Patrick is not aware of it.

Both Andy’s are off to Patrick’s right, holding down a pair of defeated-looking bean bag chairs and hogging the vegan pizzas. Patrick’s not even sure if Andrew is vegan, but you can still get chocolate cake at Portillo’s here, so anything’s possible.

On Patrick’s left, the Joes are demolishing an everything pizza and talking about early 70’s punk, at the same time. The universal constants are starting to make Patrick’s head hurt.

Across from him, on the couch, Pat is sandwiched between both Petes. Not quite literally; Peter is curled up in the very corner of the couch, as far away as he can get while still being on the same piece of furniture. In Patrick’s world, that position and facial expression means Pete is pissed and daring you to ask him what’s wrong.

No one has to ask him what’s wrong, though. It’s pretty obvious. Pat must have gotten over his issue from yesterday (or else someone’s spiked his pop). He hasn’t stopped giggling at Pete’s increasingly ridiculous stories. 

The current story is something about trying to bother Andy during a long drive in the van and being epically ignored. (There is nothing Pete likes less than being ignored.)

“I don’t know how he did it. I must have said his name a thousand times before Joe threw a pop can at me.”

Pat giggles. (Again.) “It can’t be that hard to ignore you. I bet I could do it.”

Pete’s laugh momentarily drowns out all the other conversations. “Sweets, you couldn’t ignore me if you tried.”

Patrick snorts. 

Pat just looks confused.

“Wait, do you not-- Patrick, I don’t think he recognizes that!” Pete looks at Patrick in shock. “We have to go home, Patrick. We-- I can’t live in a universe without John Hughes!”

“Who’s John Hughes?” Joey pipes up.

Pete falls off the couch, clutching his chest in exaggerated horror. Pat collapses into the back of the couch, laughing so hard tears are leaking from his eyes. 

If Peter had the power to set things on fire with his mind, they’d all know about it. (Especially Pete.)

Joe launches into a monologue about the greatness of John Hughes’ films that Patrick eventually recognizes as Pete’s. (Apparently he’s not the only one who’s heard it a million times.)

Pete, on the other hand, is trying to re-enact the entire plot of The Breakfast Club on his own, which is doing nothing to explain it to Pat.

Patrick is the only one who sees Peter leave the room. He grabs his empty pop can as an excuse and follows him up the stairs. 

Peter’s sitting at the kitchen table, frowning at the empty surface.

“You okay?”

Peter jumps. He glares at him, pushing his glasses back up with one finger. It’s less intimidating than it would have been if A) Patrick hadn’t seen him jump, and if B) Patrick wasn’t already a little bit immune to Irritated!Pete. 

“I’m fine.”

“Okay.” Patrick doesn’t believe him in the slightest, but “are you sure” is a good way to start a fight, and that’s not why he came up here.

He finds a recycling bin under the sink to put his pop can in and helps himself to the fridge to find another. He’s debating between the bright green can labeled “Swoosh” and an orange one labeled “Roar” when Peter clears his throat.

“Your Pete, is he a good guy?”

Patrick grabs the “Roar” and takes a seat across from him. “Yeah, he is. Why?”

A half-hearted shrug, unconvincing to either of them. “Pat deserves somebody good. Somebody who’ll appreciate him.”

Jesus christ on a cracker. Patrick does not miss high school, not even a little bit. “Is your Patrick even interested in guys?”

Another shrug. “I’ve never really seen him be interested in anybody, not until you guys showed up. So, maybe? He just-- I always thought Pat wouldn’t let that get in the way of somebody if he really liked them.”

Patrick amends his first statement in his mind to say “in anybody else”, just for his own sanity. Having heard Pat describe being around Pete yesterday and then not be able to decide which Pete he meant… whatever Pat might some day decide to label himself as, right now, it’s very Peter Wentz-focused.

“I don’t know him as well as you do, but I suspect that’s true.” He opens his pop can and takes a sip. He doesn’t even know what to call this flavor, but he’s had worse. “I’m not sure that I’d worry about it too much. We don’t know how long we’re even going to be here.”

Peter does not look reassured. Patrick doesn’t blame him. The last time someone told him not to worry, he ended up in a parallel universe.

A burst of laughter from the basement, highlighted by Pete’s high-pitched giggle, startles both of them. 

“I’m gonna head back down. You comin’?”

“In a minute.”

Joe sees him coming down the stairs. He only raises an eyebrow with a short jerk of the head that roughly translates to “is he okay?” Patrick shrugs in response. Contrary to popular belief, he’s not exactly a foolproof Pete-whisperer. 

 

****

 

Pete climbs into the backseat of the van as Andy and Joe are sorting out *cough arguing about cough* who’s going to drive. Patrick pulls the side doors shut behind himself and then shamelessly watches the kids while they’re not paying attention. 

Andrew lives just around the corner; he’s lingering at the front door laughing with Joey. In the driveway, Pat and Peter are standing around a car. Peter is yelling back at the house, laughing along with his friends. Pat is leaning against the car, watching Pete. (Patrick would bet actual money the kid has no idea what everyone else is talking about.)

“Think something’s going on there?” Pete asks, leaning over his shoulder to watch also.

“I know there’s not. Peter’s taking some girl to the dance.”

“Idiot.” Pete leans back into his corner of the van. “His loss, I guess.”

“They’re just high schoolers, Pete. They’re allowed to be confused.”

Pete snorts so loudly it must have hurt. “Patrick, that kid” -- he point dramatically at Pat -- “doesn’t think he’s special. So I don’t know what the Pete Wentz of this universe has been doing, but it’s  _ not _ his job.”

“His job?”

“You keep talking about universal constants, but you’ve missed one - it’s apparently a universal constant for Patrick Stumps to not know they’re special and amazing and worth being--” He cuts himself off, exhaling sharply and tugging at his own hair. “Someone has to fix that, and that someone is that kid over there who is ignoring his universe-given responsibility. So yeah, it’s ‘his loss’, and he’s bringing it on himself.”

“What--”

“Can one of you please tell Joe it’s a terrible idea to go stalking our alternate universe parents?”

“Joe, that’s a terrible idea.” Pete dives into the interruption as if into a pile of leaves. “They’ll want to talk to us and stuff.”

Patrick is not satisfied with that at all. He’s really not. It isn’t Pete’s  _ job _ to make him feel….anything at all. 

  
  
  


But a little bit of him is curious what Pete thinks he’s “worth being--”.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The idea that he’s been completely unaware of a whole huge section of his own feelings not for days, weeks, or even months, but for years....
> 
> It’s crazy, it’s downright insane.
> 
> It’s…….not necessarily wrong.
> 
> Maybe everybody doesn’t feel like that about their best friend?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well I hope you enjoyed the fluff chapters because now some Stuff™ is happening...
> 
> Brace yourselves, y'all, cause these boys are pretty stupid.
> 
> As always, thanks to [shark-myths](http://shark-myths.tumblr.com/) for the mood board for this and all the previous chapters. And you can find me [here](leyley09.tumblr.com) and the companion playlist [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/leyley09fic/playlist/2doPVQUf4MRrnvKhn4w05K?si=pHqPOKLyTietyu5Gg83IAA).

 

Friday begins like most Fridays. Pat’s alarm goes off at 6:30. He hits the snooze button until 7, when his mom bangs on the door and shouts at him to get up.

He slams the bathroom door in his sister’s face and starts the shower. He considers taking his time, but he can hear her yelling for Mom already. Better to be almost done when she finally gets annoyed enough to come upstairs.

He hates how long it takes him to decide what to wear. All his jeans look basically the same; the only difference is the amount of wear along the hems and the brand on the label. He picks a blue t-shirt out of the dresser but rejects it when he remembers Peter saying he liked the logo on the front. He grabs the next shirt in the stack, bright green with a logo for a random (and possibly fictional) company. He doesn’t remember buying this shirt, but maybe his mom picked it up and forgot to tell him _._

It’s a little snug, tighter across the shoulders than he’d like and just a smidge shorter than he’d pick for himself.

“Pat! Joey will be here in 5 minutes!” his mom shouts up the stairs.

He doesn’t have time to change now. It’ll be fine; it’s just one day. He grabs his backpack from next to the desk and tries not to trip down the stairs. He grabs a bagel from the kitchen counter, yells “thanks mom” to the house in general, and is shoving a foot into one of his sneakers when Joey honks from the curb.

Joey is already talking, as per usual, when he climbs into the back seat, already plotting his strategy for finding a willing lady going solo at the dance. Andrew is, as per usual, already ignoring him. Once Joey gets started, he doesn’t need much encouragement. Pat eats his bagel, worries about his Spanish test, and makes random noises so Joey thinks he’s listening.

He’s not even to his locker when he’s attacked from behind by some kind of octopus.

“Good morning, Patty Cakes!!”

“Ugh. Peter, it is too early for happy.”

Peter laughs in his ear but unwinds. He bounces ahead of Pat, chattering about his third period chemistry quiz.

That is, until he twists around to make sure Pat’s still following (like he’d be anywhere else). He laughs abruptly. “Oh, that’s where that shirt went.”

 

Fuck.

 

Pat is suddenly flooded with a slideshow of memories of Peter wearing this shirt. He’s had it for ages; Pat’s seen it on him a thousand times. The final image is Peter flailing around in Pat’s kitchen, sloshing pop all over himself. He’d gone upstairs to borrow something of Pat’s and must have thrown it into the hamper with Pat’s own dirty laundry. His mom wouldn’t have noticed.

How is it possible he didn’t recognize it when he put it on?

And more importantly, is anyone else going to notice?

Peter grabs his arm, stopping him from walking into an opening door. “You okay, Pat?”

Pat blinks at him and --

“Peter!”

“Hey, Jessica.” Peter drops his hand and turns away to smile at her. “Ready for tomorrow?”

Pat turns away from her excited smile. He can’t deal with her right now.

Besides, he has a Spanish test to take.

 

****

 

His locker is in the same hallway as Peter’s, but at nearly the other end. They can see each other, but they’re too far apart to hear anything, particularly when the hallway is full of other people.

Between the first few classes, he can see Jessica hanging around. Not just around, but all over Peter as well. After third period, he stops looking. He wants to know how Peter’s chemistry quiz went, but the thought of going down there, interrupting them to ask, makes his breath come short and something in his chest seize up.

Lunch is awful. Lunch is supposed to just be the four of them, a safe space in the middle of the school day. Today, his safe space has been invaded -- Jessica is sitting across from him, giggling at everything Peter says.

Pat loves the guy, but he’s not that funny.

  
  
  


He doesn’t mean it like that.

  
  
  
  


He’s pretty sure he doesn’t mean it like that.

  
  


Jessica’s voice grates on his nerves. Andrew doesn’t seem too bothered, but he rarely does. The only reason Pat can tell he’s annoyed is because every time Jessica laughs, Andrew’s grip on his book tightens. Joey is a little bit annoyed, but Pat thinks it’s mostly on Andrew’s behalf. Well, and also because with Peter distracted, Andrew reading, and Pat staring resolutely at the table, Joey doesn’t have anyone to talk to.

Okay, he can’t do this anymore.

The chair doesn’t squeak as he gets up, but he feels like it should. Andrew looks up from his book, asking where he’s going with his face.

“Locker,” Pat mumbles.

Andrew nods; Joey waves; Peter doesn’t seem to notice.

(So much for _his_ Pete paying attention to him.)

 

****

 

He doesn’t go to his locker.

He hides in the library instead, in the farthest corner with the outdated science books. He can’t deal with people right now, with noise, with movement. He’s having enough trouble thinking as it is, what with the way something has wrapped around his sternum and started squeezing.

_Okay, Pat, think. You were fine this morning when you got up. Nothing out of the ordinary - until you got to school and realized this was Peter’s shirt. Then you kinda freaked out. Why?_

Why? Because people might see it, might know that it’s Peter’s shirt. They’d jump to conclusions.

_What kind of conclusions?_

They might think I’m wearing this because he gave it to me. Because he wants me to wear it, because he wants people to see me in his shirt, like it’s some kind of nerdy substitute for a letterman’s jacket.

 

. . . . .   _Would that be so bad? People thinking that?_

Of course!

_Why?_

BECAUSE IT ISN’T TRUE!

  
  


Yelling at your own mind shouldn’t make you double over in phantom pain, shouldn’t make you gasp for air like you’ve been sucker punched. Shouldn’t bring tears to your eyes.

  


He cannot be feeling like this about Peter. He just cannot.

 

For one thing, Peter’s a boy. Pat, Pat doesn’t even _like_ boys. He doesn’t. He hasn’t. Not ever.

_Really? What about--_

**Really. Not ever.** It’s not like a bad thing, it’s totally fine for other people. Just...for other people. Not Pat. He likes girls, he does. Girls are pretty, and soft, and smell like flowers. Having one smile at him makes his brain short out a little.

_Peter smiling at you makes your brain short out a lot._

**SHUT UP.**

_And what about the other day, with Pete? You couldn’t move, you couldn’t think, you couldn’t even_ _breathe_ _. You could feel those goosebumps every time he touched you. “Like when you walk out of an air conditioned building on a hot, humid, sunny day” - that’s what you said, right? To the other Patrick? Who else in your life has EVER made you feel all hot and sweaty just by looking at you?_

Pat gives up and lays his head on the table. He stares at the fake wood-pattern until it starts to blur and then squeezes his eyes closed too tightly.

Okay, so it’s possible that he might like boys. In addition to girls? Instead of? He can’t sort through all that right now. Even in his mind, it’s like a tangled knot of string with no obvious ends. The point is, that argument doesn’t really hold up, even in his own mind, so what are the other reasons that he can’t be feeling like this about Peter. There have to be more reasons.

Peter’s got Jessica. And before Jessica, there was Sarah, and Stephanie, and Heather, and Rachel, and Emily, and Amy, and Kelly, and Lisa. There’s something very important missing from that list of names - a guy. So it doesn’t matter what Pat may or may not like, Peter clearly doesn’t like boys, and Pat will not be that guy with a crush on someone who is never going to want him back.   

_Not to interrupt your inspirational moment or anything, but you just figured out you liked boys two minutes ago. Is it not possible that Peter hasn’t figured it out either? Or just hasn’t told you? Just because he hasn’t dated one doesn’t mean he’s not interested._

Pat’s brain needs to chill the fuck out. Fine, yes, it’s possible Peter hasn’t had the same moment of self-discovery Pat just had. Other people can travel through space and time from other universes; clearly, all kinds of things are fucking “possible”.

But there’s no way Peter wouldn’t have told him if he had. Peter tells him everything, too much sometimes. Andrew routinely calls them the Poster Children for Boundary Issues.

_Are you sure?_

Yes. He has no choice but to be sure. His whole worldview just took a sudden shift to one side, like a train changing tracks while you aren’t paying attention. If it does it again, he’s going to derail.

On top of that _very valid point_ (fuck you anyway, brain), Pat has had a front row seat to every one of the girls Peter has been involved with, ever since Kelly way back in seventh grade. He’s seen what Peter’s like, the way he acts, the way he looks at them -- and Peter doesn’t do that with him. He just doesn’t. He acts like he always has, like Pat’s vitamin D - handy to have, but not necessarily fatal to be without.

He takes a couple of deep breaths, trying to force his train of thought onto a less emotional track.

So he has this crush. Fine. You can’t always help how you feel. But it’s like a cold. You can’t always help it that you’re sick, but you damn well don’t have to wallow in it and drag it out.

He needs a plan.

There’s a notebook in his backpack, leftover from last year, that he thought he’d use for English class. He hasn’t touched it yet, so it can spare some pages. He flips past Peter’s “Plan to Take Over the World” versions A - H, past some random things he’d scribbled, past Peter’s truly terrible doodles. He flips until he hasn’t seen writing for a few pages before he starts.

 

 

1\. _Don’t tell anyone about this_. 

Absolutely, _definitely_ not Peter. Joey will make things worse trying to help. Andrew might actually be helpful, but Pat’ll probably cry all over him, and that would just be embarrassing.

 

  
  
2\. _Go to the fucking dance_ _._

He promised Peter he would, and he’ll have to explain if he backs out, so that’s not an option. Besides, he does actually want to hear what Fall Out Boy/Coral Fixation sound like. Maybe he can find someone else to focus on. Distraction has helped him get over a crush before.

 

 

3\. _Ignore it until it goes away_ _._

This will definitely work.

 

“This isn’t your locker.”

“Jesus, Andrew, make some noise, will ya?”

Even as he does it, he knows his move to hide his notebook is too obvious. Andrew is the nicest of his friends, though; he only gives Pat a questioning look rather than reaching over to take the notebook.

Pat’s not going to tell him. He isn’t. He wrote it down and everything, step number 1 in his Plan to Get Over Peter Wentz.

  
  
  
  


He’s no match for Andrew’s patience.

“I think I might, maybe, a little bit, um, I might have a crush on Peter.”

“Okay.”

They blink at each other for a minute, Pat in confusion, Andrew in his normal placid state.

“What do you mean ‘okay’? Why don’t you look surprised?”

“I mean ‘okay’, that’s fine, and I’m not surprised.”

“What do you mean you aren’t surprised?!”

“Shhhh, you’ll get us in trouble. I’m not surprised because--”

“You’ve been in love with Peter pretty much since middle school?” Joey pops out of the stacks behind Andrew, dropping casually into the chair across from Pat like this is regular everyday conversation.

“What?!?” If he thought he was panicking before, he was mistaken. _This_ is panicking.

Neither Joey nor Andrew say anything while he processes that idea, that he’s been completely unaware of a whole huge section of his own feelings not for days, weeks, or even months, but for years.

It’s crazy, it’s downright insane.

  


It’s…….not necessarily wrong.

  


Maybe everybody doesn’t feel like that about their best friend?

  
  


**Fuck.**

  


“Sooooooooooo,” Joey drawls, “what are you going to do?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“Oh, come on, Pat, you have to do something. We’ve been watching you two dance around each other forever. Enough is fucking enough.”

“But Peter’s not--”

“Look, Peter’s one of my best friends in the world, but he’s also kind of an idiot. He’s just as oblivious about feelings as you are.”

“If not worse,” Andrew adds.

“Right. He’s been so jealous these last few days of all the attention you’ve been paying that other version of him.”

“But Jessica--”

“Is just a girl he’s taking to a dance. She’s cute, and she’s nice, and she won’t last, just like all the other girls. They never do, because he’d rather be with you. Eventually, they get tired of being second best."

“So you think I should say something?”

“Hell yeah!”

“Maybe not till later though.”

Joey looks sharply at Andrew. “Why the hell not?”

Andrew rolls his eyes. “Because Jessica doesn’t deserve to have her whole night ruined because Pat has shitty timing?”

“Oh wait!” Joey bounces in his chair, clearly pleased with his epiphany. “Dude, Pat, think about it. Remember homecoming last year? Or the winter formal? Peter brought a date, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Did he stick with either of them all night?”

“No? Wait, no, he didn’t!”

“Exactly. After like an hour, he came over to talk to us and never went back. Whats-her-name from the winter formal didn’t even tell him she was leaving with other people.”

“So--”

“So when he inevitably starts to ignore Jessica, drag him off somewhere and tell him how you feel.”

“Just… just like that?”

“You want to spend the rest of your life wondering ‘what if’ about this? If you don’t give him a chance, you’ll never know for sure.”

This is true. If he doesn’t say something to Peter, he really will spend who-knows-how-long wondering if Joey was right.

The bell rings, reminding him that he does still have classes to get to. Andrew and Joey disappear off to their own lockers and the last classes of their day.

Pat loiters around the corner from his own locker, peeking like a creeper around the wall until Peter’s gone before he swaps his books for social studies.

Social studies isn’t his favorite class. The legislative process isn’t that fascinating in general, and this teacher’s delivery could not be more dull.

It doesn’t take long for his mind to drift.

 _Are you-- Are you really going to just_ tell _Peter you like him? Just like that? Without any evidence that he likes you back except that Joey thinks he might?_

Andrew too.

_That’s awfully risky. Are we ready for that?_

Suddenly it’s we?

_I’m just saying, have you considered the likely outcomes of this declaration?_

Outcomes, plural?

_Outcome Number 1: The Ideal -- You tell Peter you have feelings for him, he admits he’s been hiding feelings of his own, there’s a chick-flick-worthy kiss, fade to black, everyone lives happily-ever-after._

That’s nice, he could live with that.

_Outcome Number 2: The Neutral -- You tell Peter you have feelings for him, he doesn’t have those same feelings about you but he’s very flattered, no one’s feelings are hurt, and nothing changes._

Also an acceptable option.

_Outcome Number 3: The Disaster -- You tell Peter you have feelings for him, he recoils in disgust because he’ll tolerate a lot but not that, hurtful things are said, and that’s the last time Peter ever talks to you._

Okay, no. No, that’s not-- Peter wouldn’t do that to me.

 

_Are you sure?_

  
  


_What if he’s nice at first but decides later that it’s too weird to deal with? He’ll slowly stop hanging out with you alone, stop sitting next to you, stop touching you - wouldn’t want to lead you on or give you ideas, right. Eventually you notice it’s been days or weeks since you’ve seen him._

At least then I’d know for sure, I wouldn’t be wondering forever. Wondering will kill me.

If a brain can shrug, his does. _Fine. Do whatever you want._


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tonight’s plans are going to be soooo awkward

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you thought we were going to just jump ahead to the dance and get this over with..... sorry not sorry. :D
> 
> Please enjoy this slightly early posting - I figure it's already Tuesday for some of you right? Close enough.
> 
> Mood board by the lovely and talented [shark-myths](http://shark-myths.tumblr.com/) who is also semi-responsible for the second half of this chapter existing.

 

They run one last rehearsal in Joey’s basement Friday evening. They've thrown together a set with the 4 songs from Coral Fixation they liked enough to learn plus a handful of their own material. They’re only playing for an hour, so that should be plenty, but Patrick is always prepared to throw in a cover song to avoid having to talk.

He’s tried being more Rick Schafer-like during their rehearsals, but it’s hard to be more interactive with the crowd when there isn’t really a crowd. (Joe keeps saying “we’ll just wing it”, like he doesn’t know how those words fill Patrick with anxiety.) Their “audience” - the younger, alternate versions of themselves - is at least enthusiastic, which is always nice.

Well, they’re enthusiastic about the music, anyway.

Something weird happened between last night and tonight, something no one is talking about. Pat won’t look at Peter; in fact, he’s doing everything in his power to look everywhere _but_ in Peter’s direction. Joey and Andrew are in on whatever it was. They’re doing a very careful buffering dance between the other two, a dance Patrick is all too familiar with whenever he and Pete are fighting.

He really can’t tell if Peter is aware of the issue or not. Occasionally he looks a little confused, but he isn’t making an effort to catch Pat’s eye or draw him into conversation either.

They can’t stick around forever, though. Joey’s parents are due back around 10, and no one’s ready to explain why there’s a double set of Joey and his friends in the basement.

There’s no cute giggling in the driveway from the other group tonight. It is Friday, after all, and this looks like the kind of group with standing plans for Friday nights. Tonight’s plans are going to be soooo awkward; Patrick does not envy them a bit.

“Okay, who wants to go do some stuff!” Joe yells as he slams into the driver’s seat. “It is too early for self-respecting rock stars to be going to bed.”

Patrick wasn’t aware they were self-respecting anything, but Joe has a point. It’s only 9:30, and his other option is going back to a murder scene of a hotel room to make awkward conversation with Pete about spells. If he’s got to do that, he’d rather do it with alcohol.

“Are we going to be able to get Patrick into a bar?”

“Shut up, Pete.” Patrick digs into his bag for his wallet, well, for _Rick_ ’s wallet. “I’m 22 here, thank you very much.”

“Five bucks says you’re the only one who gets carded,” Joe yells from the front seat.

“Stop yelling, you’re like six inches away,” Patrick grumbles.

 

****

  


He’s the only one who gets carded.

  


****

 

The bar they end up at is only a few blocks from their motel, so they leave the van in the parking lot and walk. An hour later, Andy is talking to some girl at a table in the corner. She’s wearing a designated driver wristband, so she might be keeping up with whatever it is he’s lecturing her about. Joe is trying to play pool and failing miserably.

Pete is three drinks in, and this is probably the best time to start interrogating him.

“Hey,” Patrick nudges him carefully - knocking Pete off his barstool is not going to help. “How’s the magic research going?”

“Ummmmmm, it’s uh, it’s okay, I guess. I remember what I did, and Andy thinks we can recreate it.”

“What did you do? I don’t think I ever asked.”

“Oh, um--”

“Can I get either of you fellas another drink?”

“Oh god, yes, please.”

“Not for me, thanks,” Patrick says with a forced smile. He waits until the bartender’s walked away before he tries again. “So you were saying?”

“I was?”

“You were, you were going to tell me what you did that brought us here.”

“Pete! I need some help over here!” Joe shouts from across the room.

“Alright, alright, I’m coming!” Pete knocks back the rest of his drink and bails, practically running in his haste to get away.

That could have gone better.

Maybe he’ll have more luck later.

  


Except he doesn’t. After another drink of his own, he gets dragged over to the pool table to help Joe too - Joe’s clearly forgotten they’re _all_ terrible at pool. Three games later, Joe gives up. Andy’s conversation partner has left, so he herds them all back to the hotel.

Back in their room, Pete goes to brush his teeth, bouncing off all the furniture along his path. Patrick falls onto his bed in his clothes, with his shoes still on. He’ll take them off after he gets a turn in the bathroom.

Then he falls asleep.

 

****

 

It’s dark and too warm in Joey’s basement. It smells like yesterday’s pizza and tonight’s popcorn war and too much teenage boy.

Andrew wheezes in his sleep just often enough to be annoying, possibly because he’s trying to sleep on two ancient bean bags that are probably health hazards. Joey, across the room on the other couch, is snoring like he wants to beat Pat’s grandpa out of the World’s Worst Snorer title.

All of these things should be putting a distinct damper on Pat’s teenage libido.

 

But --

 

The thing is --

 

Look, when you’ve finally had to acknowledge the fact that the faceless people you’ve been daydreaming about during your ‘extra-special alone time’ (to borrow a phrase from - never mind) have not _actually_ been completely made up by your imagination but instead have consisted of non-specific bits and pieces of your best friend, well -- you try not being distracted for a while.

On the floor in front of the couch, Peter sighs and rolls over, banging his knee against the front of the couch. He hadn’t moved the coffee table before he’d dropped the back cushions between the two pieces of furniture, so there’s not a lot of extra space down there.

This is simply compounding Pat’s problem though.

After his epiphany this afternoon, he’d be distracted by all the things he’s thinking about now even if he was at home and Peter was in Outer Mongolia.

Having Peter three inches away is a struggle, to put it mildly.

Why Peter chose that particular place to sleep tonight is also beyond Pat. He’d known he wasn’t going to be able to be _normal_ with Peter after this afternoon, so he’d tried to keep some extra space as a defensive measure. Joey and Andrew had been really helpful with that all night, diverting Peter’s attention and making sure there wasn’t a free seat next to Pat.

But when they’d finally decided to go to sleep, Peter hadn’t taken his cushions to the open space across the coffee table from Andrew’s bean bags or the weird empty space behind Joey’s couch that had spent a lot of the week full of band equipment -- none of the places usually used by whoever had to sleep on the floor.

Anytime before lunch today, that would have been a little weird but ultimately fine. They would have stayed awake longer than Joey and Andrew, whispering about stupider and stupider shit until one of them fell asleep mid-sentence.

Tonight, though, it feels like Peter’s trapped him on the couch. This couch is up against a wall at one end, and the other has a plastic milk crate full of movies and a floor lamp blocking his exit.

Basically, he can’t get off this couch without climbing over Peter.

 

So.

 

Here he is, wide awake at 3 AM, having trouble forming coherent thoughts since most of his blood isn’t in his brain, desperately trying to keep his hands out of his shorts because he’s pretty sure it’s against the bro code to jerk off with your friends in the room. But he also can’t leave the room without stepping on or over the reason he so badly needs to jerk off in the first place.

 

This must be how they torture spies or something.

  


Why has he never noticed how much of a mouth-breather Peter is?

  


This couch is low, and the cushions are thick. If he “accidentally” lets his hand drop over the edge, Peter is right there. He won’t even have to stretch to be touching him.

  


Except that’s super creepy so he definitely shouldn’t do that. (He tucks his left hand behind his back, just to be safe.)

He tries thinking about gross things or sad things or boring things even. He tries counting sheep, but all the sheep start sprouting wings and then some kind of fangs, which he thinks Peter would like, so then he’s back at square one.

Peter sighs in his sleep again, sending goosebumps up Pat’s arm, and makes a noise that could be either a hum or a moan. It doesn’t really make that much difference what it is, just that it happened. It is, simply, the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Pat has the presence of mind to roll over, facing the back of the couch. It’s not like that suddenly makes this okay, if anyone wakes up, but it might give him a few precious extra seconds to avoid detection.

The choking noise he makes just brushing against his dick while trying to get his hand into his shorts is way, way too loud. He can spare the index finger of his left hand, so he shoves the bent finger into his mouth, biting down around the knuckle.

Maybe it’s the events of the day, maybe it’s because he’s been denying himself for what feels like years, but nothing in the history of time has ever felt as good as this.

Most of the time, he goes to some effort constructing a visual to accompany his own hands, a bit of distraction that it isn’t someone else touching him. (Not that he’d know what that was like, but he assumes it’s different.) He doesn’t need, like, a plot or something, but a place, a person - the basics. It’s not something he slips in and out of easily; it takes work.

Not tonight.

Tonight, the second his eyes close his mind takes him to a scene so fast it’s a wonder he doesn’t get whiplash in real life. It’s the neighborhood pool a few blocks from Peter’s house on the kind of bright, hot, humid summer day that only August can create in Northern Illinois. The smell of chlorine and freshly-cut grass is so vivid he can nearly taste it.

He remembers this.

Oh god.

 

_He’s spent his maximum half an hour in the pool, now he has to get out and reapply sunscreen if he wants to wear a shirt in the next week. He’s digging through the pile of stuff they’d left on the lounge chair, looking for his SPF 50, when Peter shouts at him from the pool._

_He looks over just in time to see Peter reach the edge of the pool and push himself up and out to sit on the concrete. Water runs off him like the most cliched Abercrombie & Fitch commercial. The curve of his spine catches light and shadow in ways that make Pat’s mouth go dry. _

_He forces his eyes away from the water droplets collecting at Peter’s waistband just in time to see him look back over his shoulder. He’s reminded quite strongly of a very big cat, the kind that is heart-stoppingly beautiful but will also rip you to shreds before you can scream for help._

 

He remembers what happened next, the sudden shiver of what he’d called fear at that mental image, the urgent need to find the sunscreen and someone-not-Peter to put it on him. He’d practically run to the other side of the pool to find Andrew.

But… that was what really happened.

What if he’d stayed there, in the shadowy spot made by the weird bend in the fence? What if he’d waited to hear what Peter wanted?

What if…

 

_Peter smiles, practically purring with the attention. He swings his legs out of the pool, feet flat on the hot concrete and knees bent. The legs of his swim trunks give in to gravity and slide until they’re bunched up around his hips._

_The amount of leg he’s showing at the public pool is obscene._

_And he knows it._

_In his mind, Pat is much more smooth than he will ever be in real life. He quirks an eyebrow at Peter, playing at hard-to-get as he goes back to sorting through sweaty t-shirts and threadbare towels for his sunscreen like the vision of summer seduction by the poolside is no big deal._

_Peter doesn’t like to be ignored, so only a few seconds of this earns him one Peter Wentz backing him into a dim corner made up of weird fence and creeping vines, out of the view of the lifeguard._

_“Did you want something?” Imaginary!Pat could not sound less bothered by the miles of warm, wet, bare skin pressed up against him._

_“Not so much something as someone,” Peter mumbles, nosing along Pat’s neck._

_“Anyone I know?”_

_Peter bites the base of his neck, just enough to indicate his displeasure with Pat’s sass._

  


Damn. Pat didn’t know he had a biting thing.

  
  


Now that he’s sweaty, panting, and a lot stickier than he’d like to be, this seems like less of a good idea than it did however long ago that was. He wipes his hand across his thigh, hoping for the best. At home, he’d sacrifice his t-shirt, but that will just get him all kinds of teased in the morning. He doesn’t think he’s broken skin biting his finger, but it stings like a motherfucker as the blood rushes back into it. With his lack of pigment, there’s going to be a mark that he doesn’t know how to explain.

Joey is still snoring. Andrew’s wheeze comes at regular intervals.

Peter’s a lot quieter than he was a few minutes ago. Maybe he rolled over.

Pat would check, but that would require moving, and he’s not sure he can actually do that at the moment.

He’ll do it in a minute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Tumblr](leyley09.tumblr.com)
> 
> [Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/leyley09fic/playlist/2doPVQUf4MRrnvKhn4w05K?si=pHqPOKLyTietyu5Gg83IAA)
> 
> Please come by and say hi :)


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An empty room in an empty hallway. It’s the perfect place to have a private conversation with someone.
> 
> All he has to do now is get Peter into it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are, the bit you've been waiting for - The Dance. Bit of a long chapter, but there's a lot to get through here
> 
> My betas said this made them want to drink, so, um, prepare yourself accordingly?
> 
> I also do want to mention that I spread the events of the music video out over a much longer period than the four and a half minutes of the video. I think it's pretty obvious all that shit couldn't happen in four minutes, but I don't want anyone to be surprised. :)

 

They set up their equipment just after 5. They ran a quick sound check while a dozen perky pep squad girls and a couple harried teachers put up the last ‘decorations’, and then they had more than two hours to kill before they were supposed to go on.

The flyer crookedly taped to the wall says the dance starts at 7:30. Per the teacher who briefed them, they’ll go on at 8, play for 30 minutes, get a 30 minute break, and then wrap up with another 30 minutes.

Patrick attempts to kill time as he usually would but having to write out chord progressions on paper is a pain, especially once he remembers that nothing from his universe traveled with him to this one. This piece of paper is probably not going to make it back, if they get back, in which case writing anything down is a gigantic waste of time.

He gives up on that and goes to bug Andy about his research. While the rest of them have been “fucking around all day” (to quote Andy directly), Andy’s been in and out of several libraries around the city looking up everything he can find about reversing magical spells. He’s got an imposing stack of loose papers covered with handwritten notes and a slightly smaller pile of copied pages of books.

“Need a hand?”

“Sure.” Andy hands him a green highlighter and a handful of paper.

Patrick takes a seat on one of the nearby chairs and starts reading.

  
  
  
  
  


He has no idea what any of this means.

It’s both too technical and too vague; quantum physics would probably look very much the same to him. 

“Are you getting anywhere with this?”

“Maybe. I think so.”

“Are we going to be stuck here indefinitely?”

“Well, I mean, I don’t think I’m on the verge of a breakthrough here, so… probably yeah.” Andy peers at him over his glasses. “Have you gotten anywhere with Pete?”

“I’m not trying to get anywhere with Pete,” Patrick snaps.

Andy raises an eyebrow. “Have you gotten anywhere with getting an explanation out of Pete?”

Oh. “No.”

“Well, if you’d like to be helpful, that would be more productive than doodling on my notes. I think he and Joe are outside.”

Patrick can identify a dismissal when he hears one.

Andy  _ is _ right; getting an answer out of Pete would probably speed the process up. He suspects it might also be immensely unpleasant, so it’s not really something he wants to get into right before a show.

Or maybe ever, but it sounds like that isn’t a realistic hope.

He goes to double check his guitar instead.

 

**** 

 

“Mom, I’m not hungry. I’ll be fine, I promise!”

Pat shuts the door behind him, tugging at the sleeves on his suit jacket. It doesn’t fit right, of course; nothing does. The sleeves are too short, and it’s just the slightest bit too snug since it was bought almost two years ago. He’s just lucky he talked his mom out of that god-awful bow tie. (It’s not like he needs help getting made fun of.)

As agreed upon, he drives himself to the dance in his mom’s car. Joey and Andrew will meet him there, and Peter is eventually going to show up with Jessica, he assumes. He hopes. 

He’s never been this nervous in his life.

All day he’s been picturing all the ways this could go wrong. And maybe a couple of the ways it could go right, but anyway. He’s not a natural optimist; he knows his luck. This could go terribly,  _ terribly  _ wrong, like lose-his-best-friend-forever kind of wrong.

At every intersection, he considers his alternatives. If he turns left here, he could hide out in the back of Andrew’s favorite comic store. If he turns right here, he could try that tea shop that looks too fancy for him most of the time. If he--  No, he promised he’d go. He can chicken out just as easily at the dance as in his car on the way there.

  
  


The problem with rushing out of the house to avoid his mom is arriving at the dance super fucking early. The clock in the car reads 7:09 as he pulls into the parking lot. There are a few cars near the balloon-covered entrance to the gym, probably the decorating committee or whatever they’re called. He recognizes the band’s van at the far end of the lot, Joe and Pete leaning against the back. That seems like a decent place to kill half an hour.

That was true until he pulled up close enough to see them.

Joe looks nice, dressed up in a jacket with shiny lapels and the brightest pink shirt Pat’s ever seen on a guy. He still looks like himself, though.

Pete, on the other hand. (It’s always  _ Pete, on the other hand _ . This isn’t even  _ his _ Peter, for fuck’s sake.)

The fake tuxedo shirt should be ridiculous - it is ridiculous - but somehow it’s the least surprising thing he’s seen all day. The fact that it’s layered underneath a tuxedo jacket made for a basketball player and paired with pants made for someone who’s actually shorter than Pete - Pat’s not the world’s most fashionable teenager, but even he knows this is a disaster.

It’s frankly quite annoying how much of that disaster the eyeliner cancels out.

If Pete was wearing the eyeliner earlier this week, it was much more subtle because Pat hadn’t noticed. It’s impossible not to notice now.

They’ve also recognized him sitting in his car two spaces away, so if he continues to sit here and let his brain melt out his ears, he’s going to look like an even bigger dork than he actually is.

“Pat, my man, look at you all gussied up.” 

Pat’s never been leered at before. He’s not even sure if that’s what that is, but he’s pretty sure no one’s ever done that with their face while they were looking at him.

“Jesus, Pete, chill. You look good, Pat. Where’s the rest of the guys?”

“Oh, uh, thanks?” That wasn’t a question, good god. “I mean, thanks. Joey and Andrew are coming soon, I think. Peter’s gotta pick up Jessica, so who knows.”

The guys share a look that screams “disappointment”. Does he want to know? No, he’s pretty sure he doesn’t.

Joe shakes off whatever silent conversation they’re having. “Looking forward to your dance?”

“Not really. I’m only here--”

Pete bounces on his toes a couple times. “Only here because…”

“Because I promised Peter.” Pat looks away, across the parking lot at the slow parade of cars dropping students off.

“Pat--”

“Pete! Joe!” 

Pete’s already moving before Pat’s even figured out who’s yelling from the other side of the van. Joe waits until he’s gone around the corner of the van to giggle out loud; he rolls his eyes at Pat like they’re both in on the joke. 

“Hey, if you need a place to, like, hide out or whatever, they set us up in a room off this hallway over here.” He gestures vaguely towards the back side of the gym. “It’s not what I’d call comfortable, but at least it’ll be unlocked and empty if we’re on stage.”

Pat’s only been in that hallway a couple times. He thinks it’s got some storage rooms, maybe a coach’s office or something. He’s never seen anyone go back there, even during dances, since the doors to all the rooms are always locked. There are better options for an illicit rendezvous, like the chemistry lab that Mr. Larson always forgets to lock.

“Thanks, Joe.”

“Anytime, Pat. Hey, your boys are here.” Joe waves across the parking lot at Joey and Andrew before slapping Pat on the back. “See you later, dude.”

An empty room in an empty hallway. It’s the perfect place to have a private conversation with someone.

All he has to do now is get Peter into it.

 

****

 

A decent enough crowd has gathered by the time they go on. A school this size certainly has more students, but factoring in the fashionably late and the kids who will skip it altogether, Patrick’s not too disappointed.

Roughly midway back, off to one side, he spots three of the four musketeers clustered in their own little bubble. Both Andrew and Pat look like they’re about three minutes from throwing up. Joey waves just a smidgen too enthusiastically to be ‘cool’. Patrick can’t help but smile and wave back though until Joe kicks him in the ankle.

“Dude, ‘Rick Schafer’, remember?”

Crap, that means he has to talk to these people. 

Umm.

Pete drifts towards center stage, appearing for all the world like he’s just killing time before they start. Even Patrick’s convinced until the whisper sinks through the static in his brain.

“Say ‘hey, we’re Coral Fixation’ and then Andy will start playing.”

Bless him. 

He can pretend to be Rick Schafer. He really can. He just has to start.

“Hey, we’re Coral Fixation and this is  _ The Pros and Cons of Breathing _ .”

Andy starts the intro before he’s even done talking and away they go.

 

****

 

“Where are they?”

“What?” 

To be fair to Joey, it is quite loud in here right now. The gym has terrible acoustics; everything echoes forever in here. Honestly, Fall Out Boy sounded better in Joey’s basement last night since you could actually understand what you were hearing instead of being overwhelmed with a wall of sound.

“Where is Peter?” he yells a bit louder.

“Don’t know - oh wait!” Joey nudges him and points. “They’re over there.”

Peter should look as objectively ridiculous as all of them do, but Pat is willing to admit (to himself) that he’s past the point of objectivity here. He’s also not wearing his glasses, which is an especially rare occurrence. 

It’s probably too early in the dance to hope for Peter to abandon Jessica, but the irrational part of his brain is ignoring that as he waves at them.

He can’t tell if Peter’s wave is directed at just him or all of them in general. He’s smiling, looks like he’s enjoying himself, but Pat can’t seem to catch his eye. Joey is certainly having no trouble. He flails around, waving, air guitaring along with the band. When Pat can look away from that train wreck, Peter and Jessica have been swallowed up by the crowd.

 

****

 

Patrick’s not sure if he’s really pulling off the Rick Schafer thing well, but the crowd seems to be enjoying them. They opened with one of their own songs, and they’re most of the way through the first Coral Fixation song when he spots their doubles out in the crowd again.

Peter and his date are bouncing around with the crowd. Joey can’t seem to decide if he’s dancing or playing along with them. Pat, off to his left and slightly behind, looks in danger of taking an elbow to the face at any time. Andrew is holding down a leftover table, nose buried in a comic book; he’s nodding along to the beat, though, so Patrick won’t hold it against him.

He catches Joey’s eye just before they go into the bridge, jerking his head over towards the bleachers. Joey’s made no secret this week that he views this dance as an opportunity to scout for ladies looking for an evening’s entertainment. There are several girls sitting on the bleachers, and he’s missing this opportunity to chat with them without interruption.

Joey is fairly quick on his feet, so he catches the nod. He herds the other two in the direction of the bleachers, physically pushing both of them at various points.

 

****

 

“Joey, what the hell?” Pat hisses as he trips over his own feet and a couple of electrical cables. 

“We’re going over here, we’re gonna talk to these girls. You guys are going to find somebody to dance with instead of standing around like a couple of lumps.”

Andrew just groans.

“I don’t want to talk to any of these girls. I don’t want to dance with anybody.”

“Look, I know you’re not here to pick up a girl, but you can’t stand there and stare at Peter until he abandons his date. Talk to some people, kill some time.”

They come to an awkward stop in front of the bleachers. Pat tugs at his suit jacket, like that’s going to help. In his peripheral vision, Andrew looks like he might throw up. Joey surveys the girls sitting there as if a surface examination will be enough to tell which one is least likely to slap him in five minutes. 

(Pat has seen him try to pick up; his odds of guessing correctly aren’t good.)

 

****

 

Patrick is accustomed to Pete invading his space during shows. The only one who escapes is Andy in his fortress of drums. (Pete knocked over part of his kit once, during a rehearsal. It was not pretty.) He’s even used to Pete trying to talk to him when he does it. Occasionally, he times it right so Patrick could actually hear him, but the majority of the time it gets lost in the sound of the crowd and Patrick’s own voice. 

Sometimes what he hears are notes about the song they’re playing or the song they’re about to play, requests to change the set list - boring, logistical stuff. Sometimes it’s commentary about the crowd - Pete loves to point out the couple who are enjoying the enforced contact of the pit a little too much (mostly because it makes him blush). 

When he sees Pete coming, he’s ready to brace himself to take most of Pete’s weight for a few seconds. He’s not ready for the most perfectly timed whisper of Pete’s life.

“It’s a good thing you don’t play like this all the time. I’d never finish a set.”

The expected weight doesn’t come, leaving him off balance and stumbling as Pete twirls away back to his corner of the stage. He’s lucky Coral Fixation wrote a long gap between this chorus and verse so he has time to recover his balance and remember what the hell he’s even singing.

He can’t really think about it; he doesn’t know these songs well enough to hope muscle memory will feed him the right chords, the right melody, or the right lyrics. But when there’s a pause between songs, he can’t help it.

 

_ What the fuck was that supposed to mean? _

 

****

 

Pat clears his throat a couple times. The quickest way to get Joey off his back is to ask one of these girls to dance. Out of the handful standing nearby, he recognizes one from last year’s math class. Seems like a reasonable place to start.

“Hey, hey. Um. So, uh, it’s a dance you know, and uh, I didn’t know if you wanted to dance…”

She doesn’t even bother to say no, just giggles with her group of friends as they walk away.

Pat sighs. That’s about what he’d expected. Looking around, he can’t see any of his friends. Joey had dragged Andrew further down the bleachers, but neither of them are in sight now. Peter’s been swallowed up by the crowd. 

Deciding who to look for first isn’t difficult.

He turns back into the crowd, dodging around clusters of students, hoping to stumble upon Peter in the ever-shifting mass of humans. Being shorter than almost everyone on the planet is annoying most of the time, but it is  _ very _ annoying when you’re trying to find someone in a crowd. He thinks he spots Peter’s suit jacket a couple of times, but never for long enough to be sure.

He breaks through into a small open space and finds himself face to face with Colleen. She’s dancing by herself, which strikes Pat as odd. She slinks closer, rather like a cobra, keeping her eyes on Pat as she moves. He looks around for the rest of her entourage, Steve and their minions, but none of them are anywhere around. 

She dances around him, her skirt brushing against his legs. “Hey there, want to dance?”

“Excuse me?”

“Not a hard question. Want to dance with me?”

This is weird. Very, very weird. Colleen has never said two words to him beyond something like “move loser” and suddenly she wants to dance with him? 

The honest answer is “no”, since he doesn’t actually want to dance with her. It’s only partially personal; he doesn’t want to dance with anyone. She takes his silence as consent though, and he’s too surprised to put up any kind of fight, letting her pull him to a different spot in the crowd.

The thing is… well, the relevant-right-now thing is, Pat can’t dance. Like really, not at all. Not that he can but just doesn’t like to; any rhythm he has cannot be translated to his limbs. He can kind of do the old-white-man shuffle, and he can usually pull off the awkward shuffle-in-a-circle that substitutes for slow dancing at these school dances. Anything outside of that, however, is a no-go.

He’s just kind of standing there, not sure where to put his hands, trying to keep at least a little space between them while she’s dancing around him, when a gap forms in the crowd to another area where a group of people are dancing. Most of them have no rhythm, no moves to speak of. They look ridiculous.

They also look like they’re having fun.

Pat should be having fun. He’s never tried dancing like that, flailing around, letting the music control your limbs. This is just the kind of music that encourages dancing like that.

What the hell.

He takes one deep breath, closes his eyes for just a second, and then throws himself into the music. He zones out on the talking, the laughing, the screaming. All he can hear is the thudding kick drum, the crashing cymbals, the heartbeat-throb of the bass, the wall of noise that is the guitars. 

It feels  _ fantastic _ . 

He’s lost in it, not even able to pick out lyrics he almost knows; Patrick’s voice is just another layer of sound. He’s not even paying attention to the crowd when he’s grabbed from behind.

It’s a couple of Colleen’s goons, propelling him forward at such speed that he has no choice but to go along with them or fall. He was already off-balance thanks to whatever he was doing when they grabbed him, and these guys are taller than he is so they take bigger steps. When they let go of him, he stumbles forward, bumping into and bouncing off of some people in front of him. The crowd contracts around him, pushing him back and forth in a haphazard circle until he trips over his own feet and ends up on the floor.

 

****

 

It has been a while since Patrick has been this distracted by Pete’s onstage antics. He’s become sort of immune to Pete bouncing off speaker stacks and Joe. As long as he doesn’t get hit with anything (again) and Pete hits all his cues, it doesn’t matter.

But today, thanks to Pete’s weirdness earlier in the set, every time Pete gets anywhere near him that is all he can focus on. He drifts into range between songs, whispering things for Patrick to say, squeezes past to trade places with Joe temporarily.

Patrick’s holding himself together fairly well, in his own opinion. He doesn’t think he’s screwed up too many lyrics - no more than usual, anyway - and if he’s missed a strum here or there, the rest of the band has probably covered it up. The crowd seems pretty into it, at least the group of them upfront here by the stage. There seems to be some kind of...thing… going on further back in the crowd, but that’s not Patrick’s problem tonight.

They are blowing through this last song of the set, probably his favorite of the Coral Fixation songs they’re playing, when out of absolutely fucking nowhere, Pete catches hold of Joe’s guitar and licks the _ entire length of the fretboard _ .

The only reason Patrick doesn’t drop his guitar is because it’s strapped on.

He stumbles into the next chorus, tripping over both his own tongue and Pete’s too-smug grin next to him.

Pete is up to something, for sure, and he is damn well going to explain during their break. Patrick’s not playing another set this distracted.

 

****

 

Pat picks himself up off the floor, waiting for a flood of humiliation to sweep over him. It doesn’t come. Instead, he’s just furious. How dare these people think that they can treat him, treat  _ anyone _ this way?! So their parents make more money, so they lucked out with genes that make them match the culturally-approved physical appearance - so what? That doesn’t make them more important, more valuable than anyone else in this goddamn room.

They want him to be embarrassed that he was enjoying himself? They want him to be humiliated because they laughed at him?

Not today. He has officially had enough of this bullshit. These people don’t get to dictate his behavior.

He tugs his suit jacket, straightens his tie, and goes right back to dancing. He dives into the music even further and stops trying to control his limbs in the slightest. He becomes a one-man mosh pit, bouncing off anyone unlucky enough to be at the edge of this small hole in the crowd. He hits at least two people in the face, and he’s not sorry. 

The crowd shifts away from him but not to get away from him, specifically. It looks like there’s something more exciting several feet away. He moves with them until, between a couple of cheerleaders, he spots Peter, dead center of a circle. He’s dancing, if you want to call it that, a combination of every stupid move they tried during that one summer when they were going to film a fake music video. Other people join in, until there’s a good dozen people doing this weird group dance thing that Pat would actually pay someone to stop doing.

Across the circle, Steve and Colleen are visibly sulking. They must be responsible for this, like they were for Pat’s own dancing situation. Did they plan this in advance, sitting around with their minions plotting for weeks about which nerds to humiliate, or was this spontaneous, whoever happened to be closest? 

As the song comes to an end, he realizes it doesn’t matter how long they spent planning this. It doesn’t matter because _ it didn’t work _ . He’s not humiliated. Peter’s the center of a cheering mob of students. They took what should have been the most humiliating thing that ever happened to them and thumbed their noses at Steve and Colleen and their evil little clique. Colleen looks like she’s swallowed a slug; Steve is pouting like a kindergartner.

Pat’s never felt anything like it. He’s buoyant, floating on a wave of adrenaline and sheer recklessness. He can’t wait any longer. He won’t. There’s a crowd of cheering students between him and the last place he saw Peter, but he can get Peter away from them. He knows he can. All he has to do is ask.

And he can. The way he feels right now? He could float out into space. He can’t wait for Peter to get bored with Jessica, for him to remember that Pat is right here waiting for him. He needs to ride this feeling while it lasts and tell Peter how he feels before he goes back to being regular-everyday-Pat.

He’s maybe a row or two of people away from breaking into the circle around Peter when, through a small gap, he sees Jessica shove past someone and jump at Peter. 

Peter spins her in a circle, laughing at whatever she’s babbling into his ear. Pat feels the smallest flash of guilt that he’s about to ruin a perfectly nice evening for this girl.

 

And then-- 

 

And then.

 

Pat breaks through the crowd, stumbling a bit in the suddenly open space. He’s reaching out to touch Peter, get his attention when Jessica pulls him just out of Pat’s reach.

Pat’s seen Peter kiss people before. He has.

It’s never felt like he was being punched in the stomach before.

He gasps for air, suddenly off-balance and light-headed.

There’s a hand on his arm. “Dude, dude, you okay? Oh jesus, shit.”

Joey pulls him away, back through the teeming mass of people and into the emptier space away from the stage. “Pat, dude, what happened to your glasses?”

Glasses? Oh, right. “I don’t know.”

“Your mom’s going to be so pissed. But like for real, dude, can you see?”

Who needs to see? Seeing shit has not gone well for Pat tonight. At the moment, his immediate priority is breathing, and that’s not going so well either. And if he cries in this gym full of all these people, he’ll have to move to Antarctica; he doesn’t like the cold that much.

He pulls away from Joey and sort of makes it through the nearest exit in an upright manner. Joey yells something behind him, but then the door falls shut and cuts off most of the noise. Half the lights are off in this hallway, since it’s not one of the direct access points from the parking lot. It is, however, the hallway leading to the spare room where Joe said the band was leaving their stuff.

The room where he’d planned on-- no, no, just no. 

It’s an empty room right now, that’s all it is. He can still hear the band playing, so he’s got a few minutes to hide out and pull himself together.

 

****

 

He doesn’t hear the door open; this must be the only door in the whole building that doesn’t squeak. Of course, that could also be because of how he’s sitting - knees bent to give him somewhere to hide, arms over his head like he’s waiting for a tornado.

“Pat?”

And the universe isn’t finished fucking him over yet. Of all the people to wander in here right now, the last person he’s prepared to deal with is any version of Peter.

It’s dark in here; he didn’t bother with the lights. So maybe Pete hasn’t seen him yet, maybe he’s just looking for him because Joey tends to get carried away when he’s worried. There’s probably a full-on search party organized with an assigned grid pattern and walkie-talkies.

Something brushes across his arm, just hard enough to not be a draft, before someone sits down next to him.

So much for that.

Unlike the interrogation he’s expecting though, Pete just wraps himself around Pat and lets him cry.

It might be a minute, it might be an hour. It’s hard to keep track of time when you’re trying to remember to breathe but also all stuffed up because crying makes your nose run. Eventually though, it stops.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Pete says very quietly into his shoulder.

If he talks about it, he has to think about it, so not really.

“I was gonna tell him--” but he can’t even get it all out.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, you don’t have to tell me. I think I saw the rest of it.”

_ The rest of it _ \- what a pedestrian way to describe one of the worst things that’s happened to Pat in possibly forever.

  
  


****

 

Patrick escapes the crush of sudden fans ahead of Joe and Andy. He may also be forcing his way through the crowd - he hasn’t seen Pete in far too long.

That generally means trouble.

And besides, Pete owes him an explanation.

He’s seen Peter, surrounded by new friends with a sweet-looking girl hanging off him, but not  _ his _ Pete. He should be easy to spot, surrounded by his own crowd of new ‘friends’, passing out too-perfect smiles and bleak hopes in a way that Patrick would be jealous of if he didn’t know how much it cost Pete to do.

Joey and Andrew are off by themselves, near the door leading to the back hallway they’d used to load in earlier. “Have you guys seen my Pete?”

“Um, no.” Joey shakes his head. “Have you seen Pat?”

Oh god.

“Maybe he just left?” he asks Joey, but he can see Andrew watching him the whole time. He  _ knows _ something, or at least suspects. “Why don’t you two check the parking lot for his car? I’ll keep looking in here.”

As he’d hoped, they head for the other entrance to the gym, away from the hallway that is calling Patrick’s name like a siren.

There’s only one door not-quite-closed in the hallway -- the door to their ‘green room’. 

He steps carefully down the hall, hoping not to squeak on the industrial linoleum. The door isn’t open far enough for him to see much inside, so he eases it open so,  _ so  _ slowly, like the syrup Pete puts on his pancakes.

It’s very dark inside, but he can just make out a huddle of humans on the floor in the back corner.

He can only make out where Pete stops and Pat begins because the kid’s suit is such a light color. He can just barely hear low conversation but not well enough to understand what’s being said.

Pat’s ragged breathing is coming through loud and clear, though.

He is so angry he is shaking, the rush of adrenaline so sudden, so sharp it may be flaying him open from the inside. He doesn’t even know who he’s mad at. Pete, who should know better than to mess with this high schooler? Pat, who should keep his hands off people who don’t belong to him? Just because he can't have his own Pete doesn't mean he can waltz in and take someone else's.

If he goes in there, if he turns on the light and sees Pete's hands on some, some  _ knock-off _ version of him, he will-- he will-- he can't even imagine what havoc he will wreak on the two people on this planet he is most qualified to destroy.

The bang of a door nearby jerks his attention away. There's no one there; perhaps someone was leaving. 

Leaving - that’s a good idea.

 

****

 

A quiet ‘click’ distracts Pat a little from his panicking. “What was that?”

“I don't know. Sounded like a door closing. Maybe a draft?”

“Was the door closed?”

“Honestly, kiddo, I don’t have any idea if I closed the door or not. Wasn’t exactly what I was worried about when I came in.”

Even that vague reminder is enough to feel the anxiety squeezing at his lungs again.

“Hey, Pat, I don’t think you should give up, not yet.”

“But he  _ kissed _ her, in front of everybody.”

“See, I’m not sure that’s what actually happened. ‘Cause I’m pretty sure  _ she _ kissed  _ him _ . So I don’t think you missed your shot.”

“He didn’t stop her.”

“Well, no, but-- maybe he didn’t want to hurt her feelings? I just think you should at least find out, ask him about it, before you give up and move on.”

Pat is too tired to argue about this. It doesn’t matter who instigated the kiss. He can’t go out there and pull Peter away from Jessica now. He’ll look and feel like an absolute heel if he does that. He just wants to go home, climb into bed, and never come out.

“You don’t have to ask him right now. But you should probably come back to the dance for a while.”

“Why the  _ hell _ would I want to do that.”

“I can’t be the only person who saw you were upset when you left the room, Pat. Don’t give those people any more ammunition than you have to, right? I’m not saying you have to go in and be all happy with Peter, but at least pretend you’re okay for a while before you bail.”

“Ugh, fine.”

“Besides,” Pete bounces to his feet in an obnoxiously chipper fashion, “we still have 30 minutes to go and everything we’re playing in this set is Fall Out Boy. You’ve really got to see Patrick in action, he’s amazing.”

Pat snorts. These guys are worse than he is, jesus. “Yeah, okay, let’s go.”

 

****

 

He didn’t really think that through, in hindsight. Turns out walking back into the gym during a weird lull between songs with the bass player of the band that no one knows you know draws some attention, particularly when you both look, well, like you’ve been on the floor together. His suit is unforgivably wrinkled, his tie’s practically undone it’s so loose, and he’s fairly certain part of his shirt isn’t tucked in right. He could tell everyone he’s flushed and puffy because he’s been crying for twenty minutes, but honestly, he’s not sure that would be an improvement over what everyone clearly thinks he’s been doing.

Pete doesn’t look any different than he did on stage earlier which is really fucking annoying. How he gets away with sitting on the same floor without looking the least bit disheveled...ugh. Pete leaves him next to Joey and Andrew with an elbow nudge and a not-even-remotely-subtle wink, ducking around the staring crowd like he doesn’t see them.

“Um, Pat?” Andrew hands him a slightly bent but surprisingly unbroken pair of glasses. “Where did you go?”

“What?” Off to one side of the makeshift stage, the band looks just as thrilled to see Pete as Pat’s friends are to see him. Joe is talking and gesturing at who-knows-what; Andy is just shaking his head, arms crossed. Patrick is nowhere to be seen.

“We were looking for you outside, Patrick was looking for you guys in the hallway, but he said he couldn’t find you.”

“Oh, I, uh--”

“Patrick Stump!” A shriek right in his ear makes all of them jump. “Pat, you naughty boy.”

Andrew’s cousin Alicia bounces up and down next to him, hanging off his shoulder with a handful of her friends clustered a couple feet away.

“You could have told someone you knew the band, Pat. That’s not the kind of information you keep to yourself, even if you are hogging the bass player.”

“I’m not--”

“But since he’s clearly off the market, I don’t suppose you could introduce us to the singer? He’s freaking adorable.”

“Not now, ladies,” Joey steps between Pat and Alicia. “They’re about to go back on. Maybe afterwards, okay?”

The girls go but not without some not-so-gentle nudging on Joey’s part, leaving Pat pretending he can’t feel Andrew trying to look through his skull directly into his brain.

“What.”

“Joey said you were upset when you disappeared.”

“I was. I am. As soon as the band’s done, I’m going home.”

The band starts a new song without any introduction whatsoever, startling everyone who wasn’t watching - which was almost everyone, since they’re all too busy staring and pointing at Pat.

He tries to enjoy the band; he thinks he would if he could forget the last hour of his life happened. But he can feel the eyes on him; he thinks he can almost hear the whispers over the music.

Andrew actually managed to find a girl to talk to (or whatever), so he disappeared to the dark end of the bleachers as soon as the band started up. Joey lingers in the vicinity, clearly torn between headbanging, chatting up some girl, and not abandoning Pat.

Every couple of minutes, Pat glances around the crowd. He’s partially doing what Pete recommended - not letting these vultures know he was upset earlier.

But mainly, he’s looking for Peter.

The fact that Peter hasn’t come to find them, not once, is very odd. It does not fit the pattern of behavior that Pat has come to expect.

The music stops very abruptly, at least to Pat who hasn’t been paying full attention for a few songs. Onstage, Patrick is thanking the crowd as the rest of the band waves their way off.

That’s that. He steps up next to Joey, bumping into him with an elbow. “I’m taking off.”

It’s maybe a sign of how shitty this night has been that Joey doesn’t try to stop him.

He steps out the door into the parking lot, shivering in his thin suit jacket. It’s as silent as a town this size ever is as he walks, just the sound of his own footsteps to keep him company as he moves away from the building.

Halfway to his car, he hears the gym door slam open. Footsteps follow, someone running out into the parking lot.

“Pat! Where the fuck are you going?”

Of course,  _ now _ Peter shows up.

“Home. Drove myself, remember, so I could leave whenever I wanted.”

Peter’s frown goes from confused-and-annoyed to viciously disapproving while Pat talks. He looks over Pat’s shoulder towards the far end of the parking lot where the some of the band is not-quietly loading the van.

“Alone?” 

That question doesn’t even make sense; of course he’s going home alone. When has he ever not gone home alone? But then there’s a loud thud and Joe and Pete’s laughter behind him.

He refuses to look over his shoulder, just on principle, but that means he’s stuck looking at the downright bitchy expression on Peter’s face.

The fucking _ nerve _ of this asshole. An hour ago he’s sucking face in the gym in front of god and everybody, and he has the _ gall  _ to get judgy about Pat’s behavior?! No, nope, not happening. He has had enough.

“I don’t think that’s any of your business,” he says, letting every ounce of his fury leak into his voice.

Peter flinches from it, as he should. “Pat, c’mon on.” He reaches out like he’s going to grab hold of him and loses his balance, stumbling, when Pat jerks away from him. 

“Good night, Peter.” He doesn’t run away; he won’t give him the satisfaction. 

His hand shakes as he tries to unlock the car, badly enough that he drops the keys twice before he can get them into the lock. He is livid, overflowing with adrenaline, fight-or-flight instinct well and truly engaged. He wants to punch Peter and possibly also Jessica; he wants to throw up on the sports car parked next to him. He entertains the thought of burning the whole gym down as he fights to buckle his seatbelt.

The car lurches forward for a split second when he shifts into drive instead of reverse. His panicked braking digs the seatbelt into his shoulder and stomach, bright spots of pain to focus on as he pulls out of the parking lot. He cycles through rage, heartbreak, and humiliation, barely remembering the route home.

He’s turning onto his own street when he realizes his entire family will still be up when he gets home. His mom will want to hear about the dance, and he does not want to talk about any of it. He doesn’t think he can.

He parks at the curb, considering his options. He could go in through the front door, have a fight with his mom, cry in front of his whole family. He could try to sneak in the back door, hoping that it’s unlocked and that there’s no one getting a snack when he sneaks through the kitchen.

Or….

He knows his bedroom window isn’t locked. It’s never locked, because at least once a month, one of his friends climb up his mother’s trellis onto the porch roof and through his window. He’s never tried it, certain that he’ll be the one who breaks the trellis.

Obviously, he has no other option tonight.

The porch covers the front of the house and wraps around a bit of one side. The rooms on the ground floor at this part of the porch are the only-used-on-holidays dining room and the home office. Neither shows any lights, so it’s reasonable to assume they are unoccupied.

He grabs hold of the trellis, shaking it a little bit. He knows it’s firmly fastened to the house - he helped his dad install it - but sturdy for flowering vines and study for teenage boys are two different things. He contemplates the angles like he didn’t almost fail geometry before just shrugging. Joey does this; it can’t be that hard. 

He takes off his dress shoes and his socks; those shoes have no tread, no grip, and will not be an advantage. He bundles them all into his jacket and tosses the whole thing up onto the roof in front of his window. And then he’s put it off for as long as he can. He starts to climb.

The trellis creaks and shakes but doesn’t sway. He has to push some vines aside to get a good foothold at various points, but it takes him less time to climb it than it took him to prepare for the climb. He grabs his jacket and shoes, pushes the window open, and climbs very carefully through. He doesn’t turn on any lights, tiptoes around the room as he closes the window and takes off the rest of his horrible suit, and crawls under his covers.

This whole night has  **sucked** . This whole week, actually, has not been the best week of his life. Before this week started, he had his friends, they had a routine, everything was fine. Now, the entire student body thinks he snuck off during the dance to do...something with some guy in a band, he’s got all these feelings he’s going to have to deal with, he’s got a best friend who may or may not be dating some girl and who may or may not be disgusted with him because of the guy in a band thing. He can’t decide what to do about his feelings and all the (mostly) unrequested advice until he knows for sure if Peter’s dating Jessica for real now or if Peter’s going to turn out to be a homophobic asshole. He knows he can’t do anything about the entire student body, so the rest of the school year is probably going to suck unless something even more shocking happens, which - they have people from an alternate universe in town, they’ve probably met their quota on cosmic miracles in Wilmette for a while.

He’d feel a lot better about the universe as a whole if it would just let him be unconscious for the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours.

 

****

 

This is not the first time Patrick has played a show while simultaneously wanting to murder his bass player. It is probably not the last time. Some days, it feels like every strong emotion Patrick has ever had has been related to Pete somehow.

He’s more familiar with these songs, so he doesn’t have to devote as much attention to them which gives him more attention to devote to pretending to be Rick Schafer. Andy had only showed him a couple of videos, but he’d watched those dozens of times until Rick’s most common movements were burned into his brain. He stalks along the front of the stage, making eye contact with everyone who wants it, winking at everyone who blushes. He lets a few of the bolder girls grasp at his free hand; he’s careful to stay  _ just _ out of reach so they can touch him but never completely grab hold. He does things to his mic stand that he’d never have considered before because they are - quite frankly - completely ridiculous, but the crowd goes crazy.

He does all of this without looking once in Pete’s general direction.

Every time that Pete walks towards him during their first song, he turns and walks the other direction. 

Eventually Pete stops trying.

The set flies by and before he knows it, he’s saying goodbye to the crowd while the rest of the guys leave the stage, off some stairs at the back. Someone switches on some music, giving the students something else to dance to and distracting everyone for just long enough that they can start tearing down their equipment without interruption.

Patrick packs his guitar quickly and efficiently, then moves to help Andy take his kit apart. They work in silence until he sees Pete and Joe take the first pieces of equipment towards the doors.

“I need to switch rooms with one of you tonight. I don’t care who it is or what excuse you give Pete, but I cannot be in the same room with him tonight, for everyone’s sake.”

“I lost sight of you two for less than ten minutes. What did he do?”

“So far as I could tell, high school me.”

“What?! Are you sure?”

“It was dark, there was no personal space going on but a lot of heavy breathing. I think we can all do that math. I didn’t stick around to notice who was doing precisely what to who.”

“Patrick--”

“Look, if you want to talk to him about it, be my guest. I have no desire to hear anything about it. I can’t even look at him right now, let alone be stuck in a hotel room with him.”

“I just--”

“Andy, I swear to fucking god, I will sleep in the van if one of you won’t switch with me.”

“Fine,” Andy eventually says. “I’ll switch.”

“Thank you,” Patrick says with feeling. 

When Pete and Joe come back up for another load, Patrick works hard at keeping the other guys between himself and Pete. Not too hard, because both of them are familiar with the signs of an impending Stump explosion, but harder than he feels he should have to. Pete is also familiar with the signs of an impending Stump explosion, but he’s not making the same effort to avoid it.

He calls shotgun before they’ve even left the building which is a distinct breach of shotgun-protocol. It’s shocking enough that no one argues, though Pete clearly wants to. Patrick doesn’t know what Andy says to him, in hushed whispers on the far side of the ‘green room’, and he doesn’t care.

He has a tenuous grasp on his temper on his best days. 

Today is not one of his best days.

Outside their motel, Andy breaks the awkward silence in the van. “Patrick, why don’t you and Joe go grab some food?”

“Uhhh.” Joe glances into the rear view mirror.

“I’m not--” Pete starts.

“Great!” Andy says over top of him. He pushes Pete out of the van and tosses his wallet onto Patrick’s lap before he follows him. The van shakes as he slams the door behind them. 

Joe sighs with such force that it ruffles Patrick’s hair. “Fan-fucking-tastic.”

“What?”

Joe just shakes his head and pulls out of the parking lot.

 

****

There are no lights showing in the window of the room Patrick had been sharing with Pete, so they carry their food into the room Andy and Joe have been sharing. 

The fifth floor’s color scheme is blue instead of red, so the room looks less like a murder’s been committed inside it. It still makes Patrick dizzy to look at the walls too long, but it’s an improvement over the red disaster downstairs.

Andy is seated at the flimsy table, leafing through a large, old-looking book. Pete is sitting on the floor, leaning against the nearest bed and coloring on his shoe. 

As Joe unpacks the bags, piling sandwiches, chips, and pop bottles on the nearest bed, Patrick ducks into the bathroom to wash his hands. He walks out just in time to see Pete leave the room. 

“I guess that’s my cue then,” Andy says drily. He marks his spot in the book and starts to put some of the books into his backpack. “Which of those sandwiches is mine?”

“What happened?”

Joe and Andy turn to look at him in creepy unison. “Seriously? You really thought he was going to stay in here with you being all-” Joe’s weird hand gesture does little to explain what he thinks Patrick’s being.

And he has a point. That would have been appallingly awkward, and Patrick didn’t really want to be around Pete anyway.

Andy dumps his food into his backpack and grabs his duffel. “Patrick, your stuff is over there. See you guys in the morning.”

Joe shuts the door behind him and sits down to eat. He doesn’t comment on the evening’s drama, but he doesn’t have to. Patrick sits across from him, picking at his sandwich. He’s still too angry to eat.

“Dude, what the fuck is your problem tonight?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Bullshit. You were just nervous before the show. We played, and you did fine. We had a break, you and Pete disappeared… fuck, what did you guys do?”

“Nothing! I did  _ nothing. _ Pete’s the one who--” He cuts himself off. He doesn’t want to even think about that.

“The one who what? Used all the toilet paper and didn’t refill it? Set one of your guitars on fire? Killed a vagrant? What sort of scale are we talking here?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, you think if I saw Pete murder someone all I’d do is give him the silent treatment?”

“Actually, yes, but that’s beside the point. What. Did. He. Do.”

“Fucked the other Patrick.”

“Are you sure?”

“Why does everyone keep asking me that? Yes, I’m sure.”

“It’s just… I saw Pat leave the gym just as we finished our first set, and he looked upset. Not exactly in the mood, you know?”

“He’s in high school; moods change.”

“And you actually saw them...doing...something.”

“Well, no, not exactly, it was really dark, but I saw enough.”

Joe doesn’t look convinced. “Patrick, why do you care? You’ve walked in on Pete before; we all have. Usually you yell at him about locking doors, and we all move on with our lives. Tonight, you’re having a goddamn meltdown. So - what the fuck is different this time?”

“Nothing. Nothing is different, I’m just sick and tired of everything, that’s all. We’re stuck in some alternate universe, and instead of helping us figure out how to get home, he’s contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”

“So you’re just upset about the age of the alleged partner, nothing else.”

“Of course!”

“So you’d have yelled at him just the same regardless of who it was? Even if it was other me?”

“I didn’t--”

Joe stares at him. “You didn’t yell at him.”

“No.”

“Patrick, you yell at him for literally everything, and this you don’t yell at him about?”

“I couldn’t. I wanted to,  _ ho-ly fuck _ did I want to, but -- I was too angry to yell.”

Joe takes a bite of his mostly forgotten sandwich and chews slowly. He steeples his finger together in front of his face, like some kind of film noir detective prepared to explain the facts of his case. “Patrick, my friend, you are a Grade A Idiot.”

“Excuse me?”

“You really, legitimately, deep in your heart, think you saw Pete doing something you assume was sexual with someone, and you really think the only reason you’re this upset is because that person is in high school. Wouldn’t matter which of the hundreds of kids in that room it was, you’d be equally upset.”

Patrick clenches his teeth, chokes back the memory of  _ Pat, who should keep his hands off people who don’t belong to him _ , and nods.

“And that’s why you’re an idiot. Because you believe that, you think I believe that, you think Andy believes that. Pete maybe would, if you’d said any of that to him, but he always believes whatever “fact” means you care the least about him.”

Patrick pushes up and out of his chair. “I--”

“I’m not finished,” Joe snaps. “We could have been home days ago, we could be going home right now if you’d pull your head out of the sand and pay attention to yourself and your surroundings - particularly the human ones. But you’d rather play the ostrich and doom not only yourself but the rest of us to being stuck here for who the fuck knows how long because that’s easier for you than dealing with your feelings. So not only are you an idiot, Patrick, you’re a selfish fucking asshole, too.”

His hands are shaking; he feels like he’s developed a twitch in his left eye. “Are you done?”

“Yeah, I think I covered the main points.”

“Good.” He grabs the van keys from the dresser and slams the motel room door behind him. It’ll serve Joe right if the neighbors call to complain. 

The quiet in the parking lot feels hollow and echoey compared to the fierce anger in Joe’s rant. It’s not freezing, not yet, but the wind is picking up, like a storm’s coming.

He shoves things off the back seats, heedless of fragility or value. The seats aren’t very comfortable, and there’s nothing left in here that he can use as a blanket without unpacking all of their equipment, which he’s not going to do.

He curls up in as tight a ball as he can manage and hides his face deep in his coat collar.

It’s gonna be a long night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO.
> 
> These Patrick's are such drama queens, right?!
> 
> Feel free to vent in the comments or swing by [my tumblr](leyley09.tumblr.com) and tell me all about how terrible I am for letting this happen. :)
> 
> And cheer yourself up with the happy songs at the end of the [Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/leyley09fic/playlist/2doPVQUf4MRrnvKhn4w05K?si=pHqPOKLyTietyu5Gg83IAA)


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This, right now, this sucks. If he has to do this for fuck-knows how long…. He’s exhausted just thinking about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy posting day everybody, and happy birthday to me! If you'd told me five years ago that I'd spend the night of my birthday posting part of a novel-length RPF fic, I would probably have laughed. Oh how quickly things change. :D
> 
> Much shorter chapter than last week. Hope everyone's still enjoying themselves after last week's angst fest. Bear with me - the good stuff is coming. I promise.

 

The van doesn’t leak. That’s the nicest thing he can say about his night in it. 

It rained most of the night, not a steady rain that becomes white noise, but a rain that would taper off before coming back with a vengeance. He doesn’t know what the temperature dropped to, but he certainly wasn’t wearing enough layers for it.

It’s not that he couldn’t have gone inside. Joe probably would have let him in.

It’s just...he’s pretty sure that would have involved talking to Joe.

 

The sun doesn’t come up so much as the darkness slowly fades away. Patrick’s awake, watching everything outside the van come into focus a millimeter at a time. It’s an obnoxiously appropriate metaphor for the last few hours.

In an ideal world, Patrick would have distracted himself from all the shit Joe said, but there wasn’t a lot of distraction available in the dark. He had the van keys but no money left, so going anywhere was out. They’d parked in a dark spot, so there wasn’t enough light to see even when it wasn’t pouring down rain. The batteries were dead in the portable cd player.

All he had left to do…..was think.

He didn’t want to. He wanted to do five thousand other things besides think about what Joe had said. 

But when you’re wide awake at 3 AM, your brain rarely takes you somewhere you want to go.

Joe said he had his head in the sand. But he’s not oblivious to the situation; he just doesn’t completely understand what the fuck is going on.

Pat’s behavior he understands. He knows how  _ he _ felt about Pete when they met, when the fact that someone older and cooler wanted to talk to him was absolutely mindblowing. Just a few years separate him from the flushing and stammering and being oh-so-very overwhelmed. He remembers all of it. (He doesn’t remember when it stopped.)

What he doesn’t understand is Pete. (Not that that’s new.) From the very beginning, Pete had looked at Pat like he was a mint condition Thundercats figurine. He’d flirted with him, blatantly, but without any effort to take it any further. And that rant about how Pat didn’t know he was special - that was very weird.

 

But.

 

Andy and Joe haven’t acted like they think it’s weird.  _ Au contraire _ , they’ve acted like Pete’s being as normal as he ever is, like Patrick should have expected this because it’s just how Pete treats Patrick Stumps.

It feels very similar to the way he feels about those visual illusions. For years, he would have sworn he was looking at a wrinkly old lady then suddenly, thanks to Joe and Andy, it’s a young woman with a fancy necklace. Nothing’s changed - except him. It’s disorienting. 

It’s finally light enough to be called morning. A couple of birds chirp at each other just within earshot. The world is still turning, nature is still behaving as it always has, while Patrick has just had an epiphany that is shaking the foundations of everything he thought he knew.

 

****

 

Sunday morning dawns rainy and grey. Pat has slept but just barely. Between his own obnoxious brain and the rain pelting his window, he’d managed a few hours. Those hours had been further interrupted by dreams of chasing Peter through endless hallways, Peter always just out of reach or just disappearing around the next corner.

The grey light filtering through his curtains fits the way he feels.

 

Sad.

 

Weak. 

 

Insufficient.

 

He wants - oh how badly he wants - to hope that Joey and Andrew and Pete are right. He wants to hope that Peter wants him too, that last night with Jessica didn’t mean anything, that Peter isn’t as disgusted as he’d looked.

He wants to hope, but that seems like a lot to hope for, probably too much.

  
  
  


Outside his room, he can hear his family getting up, one at a time, as the morning moves on.

 

He stays in bed.

  
  


****

 

If Patrick were asleep right now, he’d be really pissed at whoever was banging on the door, so he doesn’t blame Joe for the string of obscenities he answers the door with.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me Pete was in love with me?!”

Joe shuts the door in his face.

Fortunately he doesn’t lock it, so Patrick lets himself into the room. He has more to say (and a desperate need for a new shirt). 

“I’m serious, why didn’t anyone tell me?”

Joe’s had time to crawl back in bed, but he answers from underneath the covers anyway. “Pete tells everyone he meets he loves you. We sort of hoped you’d gotten the memo.”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t mean that.”

“If he doesn’t mean it, why does he only ever say it about you?”

Patrick stops pulling all the clothes out of his bag. “He only says that about me?”

Joe sighs - a deep, mournful sound - before he moves the blankets and sits up. “Of course he only says that about you. Everything he says and does, both to and about you, is different than everyone else and always has been. You’re the only idiot that didn’t notice.”

“Okay fine, I’m slow, I get it now. What does figuring that out have to do with getting us home?”

“Andy has a theory,” Joe shrugs. “He hasn’t gotten a solid answer out of Pete yet, but you two and your relationship drama is probably at the center of why we’re here instead of turned into a giant robot.”

“Do you think they knew about robots when that book was written? Never mind, that’s not relevant. The point is, I’ve figured out Pete’s feelings, and we’re still here, so the theory sounds busted.”

“Maybe you figuring out his feelings wasn’t the only point. Now, it’s not even 8 AM, so if you would please shut up or go away, I want to go back to sleep.”

Patrick flips him off and takes his clothes into the bathroom. If he’s going to be considering what else he needs to do to get them home, he might as well shower.

 

****

 

It must be nearing lunchtime when there’s a quiet knock on Pat’s bedroom door. The knock startles him; he had just been debating the odds that he could sneak to the kitchen without encountering his family. His first instinct is to yell “go away” or to pretend that he’s still asleep - but maybe his mom will be willing to bring him food.

“Come in.”

The door opens, footsteps following as someone enters the room.

  
  
  


His mom would have been talking already. 

  
  


“I know you’re awake, Pat.”   
  


_ Shit. _

 

Maybe if he’s very still, very quiet, maybe Peter will go away. He holds his breath.

The bed shakes as Peter falls onto it, elbows and knees and ankles bouncing off various bits of Pat.

This is first time Pat can remember a silence being awkward with Peter. They’re both stubborn as hell, so it’s going to be a contest of who can stand the awkward the longest.

He wins, in a manner of speaking.

“I’ve never been to a dance like last night’s. The band didn’t suck, king and queen douchebag didn’t ruin anyone’s night, and my best friend, Patrick Martin Stump, was  _ the _ talk of the night.”

If he thinks Pat is acknowledging that, he’s got another thing coming.

“In addition to being the first backfire in Steve and Colleen’s little plan, which would have been newsworthy on its own, Patrick M. Stump also garnered the envy of a significant portion of the student body by having some sort of tryst with a member of the band in the middle of the dance and then leaving with them. Nobody knew he had it in him.”

Not touching that with a ten-fucking-foot pole.

“You know, last Sunday, the thing I was thinking about the most was the perfect selections for our Halloween movie marathon, followed by what I might have to bribe you with to get you to the dance. It never occurred to me that I’d be here today to recommend you get tested for….everything.”

“Excuse me.”

“You don’t know where that creep has been, Pat. I guarantee most of the people he’s fucked around with aren’t as uncontaminated as you are. Or were.”

“You know what, fuck you. You of  _ all _ people don’t get to judge my contaminated-ness.”

“Pat, please tell me you know you can do better than  _ him _ . You know they’re gonna leave, right? Even if they don’t figure out how to get back to wherever the hell they’re from, they aren’t going to stay in Wilmette. Eventually, you’re going to be the faceless random he hooked up with in a high school gym - he’s not going to remember  _ you _ even exist.”

“Go to hell, Peter. Thank you so much for coming right over to shit on the only nice thing that’s maybe ever happened to me. I know they’re leaving. I know I’m a cheap substitute, but AT LEAST SOMEBODY WANTED ME FOR ONCE.” 

People who are going to be shitty to him don’t get the dignity of space in his bed. He shoves at Peter with all the force his anger can muster, dumping him out of the bed and right on his ass.

“Pat--”

“So thank you for reminding me that I’m alone and that I’m always going to be alone and I’m never going to have -- Just go. Please. I don’t want to talk about this with you.”

“But Pat--”

“Shouldn’t you be taking Jessica to lunch or something?” He rolls over, tangling himself hopelessly in his blankets.

“Actually,” Peter snaps, “I came over here to take  _ you _ to lunch. I have no idea where Jessica is or what she’s doing, and I don’t care. You and your potentially broken heart I do care about, but fine, whatever. Stay in here and be miserable.”

“Awfully cavalier attitude about a brand new girlfriend.”

Peter pauses at the door. “She’s not my girlfriend. Never was, probably isn’t going to be based on the way she left last night.”

Pat doesn’t know what to say to that. And while he’s thinking, Peter leaves.

 

****

 

Joe’s still asleep when Patrick gets out of the shower, which means he’s not going to stop him storming downstairs and demanding to talk to Pete.

Fate stops him instead. When Andy answers the door to their room, he’s alone. “Pete went looking for breakfast. Or something.”

“Oh.”

Andy walks away from the open door - hopefully a signal to follow him in. The table in this room is covered with papers already, highlighted in a rainbow of colors. 

“So, um, I figured something out last night.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Apparently I’m the only one who didn’t know how Pete felt about me?”

“Feels.”

“What?”

“Feels, present tense. And yes, you are.”

“Right. Joe said you had a theory about that.”

“In a manner of speaking. I told you I think he misses when you acted like Pat.”

“Like a blushing, stammering idiot?”

“You’re still a blushing, stammering idiot, Patrick. No, like someone who might like him back.”

Patrick is speechless. 

“I don’t think he meant us to change universes or whatever we did; I think he was aiming more for time travel. But everything I can find says the slightest emphasis in the wrong place can make a lot of difference, plus the intent behind the spell has an impact as well. Either way, he got a time and place where there’s a Patrick Stump that couldn’t be more delighted to see him.”

“That’s not-- I don’t -- shit.”

Andy just laughs at him. “And there’s always the possibility that the universe heard his wish and decided what he really needed was something else entirely. In which case, we’re probably fucked until he gets it, whatever that might be.”

Fan-fucking-tastic.

 

****

 

The next visitor is Pat’s mom. She also knocks, but she doesn’t wait for an answer. She did bring him a sandwich, though. That’s an improvement over Peter already. She puts the sandwich on the bedside table and pats him gently on the shoulder. 

He expects her to leave after that, but she doesn’t. She picks up his suit, which he left all over the floor, and hangs it up without saying anything about how he left it.

That’s weird.

Eventually though, there are no more clothes to pick up, and his mom sits down on the side of the bed.

“So we didn’t hear you come in last night. Was it very late?”

“No,” he mumbles. “It was like, 10, or something.” He doesn’t look at her, but he can see her frown in his peripheral vision. 

How he got into the house at 10pm without them noticing is apparently not as important as what she came up to ask him. “Peter looked very upset when he left here. Would you like to tell me what that’s all about?”

“No, I would not.”

He doesn’t expect that to be the end of it. 

It’s not.

“Pat, he has been your best friend since you were seven years old. You have been through all kinds of arguments and fights, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen that boy leave this house in tears. If you don’t want to tell me what you’re fighting about, that’s fine, I can’t make you. But I would like to know what you’re going to do to fix it.”

“Why am I the one who has to fix it?”

“Two reasons. We couldn’t hear what you were saying, but we could hear you shouting. And only you shouting. That’s one reason. But the main reason is I saw Peter come into the house looking like Christmas break came early and leave looking very different -- after you yelled at him. So. What are you going to do to fix it?”

“I don’t know, Mom. He said some stuff that really hurt my feelings.”

“Did you tell him that he’d hurt your feelings?”

“No. I don’t think he cares that much, actually.”

“Bullshit.”

That gets Pat’s full attention - his mom doesn’t swear like that.

“Son, I’m not sure whose feelings you think he cares about more than yours, but I’m quite confident you’re wrong. If you just explained to him what happened, I’m sure he’d apologize and you could work it out.”

“Yeah okay Mom. I’ll figure something out.” He’s hoping that will be the end of it, but apparently not. “What?”

“Well you aren’t doing anything right now. Maybe you should get started on that.”

“But Mom--”

“Never put off till tomorrow, Pat. Eat your sandwich and go tell that boy how you feel.”

He watches his mom suspiciously as she leaves the room. She doesn’t-- she can’t  _ know _ . That’s  just not acceptable at all.

She does have a point though; he might as well get this over with. To be fair, it didn’t sound like Peter was disgusted so much at the “guy” thing as which guy it was, which is a definite improvement over some of Pat’s late-night fears. And something clearly happened with Jessica after he left last night, so he may have one less thing to feel like a jerk about.

That still doesn’t mean Peter is interested in him or willing to consider it, but he can’t live like this. It’s been something like 48 hours since he noticed these feelings, and he feels like an overused ping pong ball already. He gets a mental flash of months, years of keeping this to himself: censoring everything he says out loud; over analyzing every touch, every smile, every look that lingers; pretending it doesn’t kill him when Peter asks someone else to the next dance, when a girl finally sticks long enough to invade their lunches, their diner nights on a regular basis.

Oh god. He might throw up.

He can’t do that. This, right now, this sucks. If he has to do this for fuck-knows how long…. He’s exhausted just thinking about it.

So his mom’s got a point. Whatever happens, it needs to happen so he can start doing whatever one does to get over Peter Wentz.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Tumblr](leyley09.tumblr.com)
> 
> [Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/leyley09fic/playlist/2doPVQUf4MRrnvKhn4w05K?si=pHqPOKLyTietyu5Gg83IAA)


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “That’s why you were being weird Friday night.”
> 
> “I wasn’t that weird Friday.”
> 
> “You didn’t talk to me once after lunch Friday. I couldn’t figure out what I’d done to piss you off that much, and I couldn’t get you alone to ask. I was going to wait until Andrew and Joey fell asleep and ask you, but, um.”
> 
> Off the top of his head, Pat has never seen Peter Wentz blush. 
> 
> Until today.
> 
> Oh god.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early chapter! I'm on the road tomorrow, headed "home" for my sister's wedding, so surprise!
> 
> Ngl, I have had a shitty day. Like, a goes-down-in-history shitty day. So I hope this makes someone else's soul happy like it made mine. Don't ever be embarrassed for hiding in fiction when life sucks. At the very least, this is cheaper than drugs. :D

 

His first stop is Peter’s house; no such luck, because that would be too easy. Mrs. Wentz is confused that he’s looking for Peter, since Peter went out to meet him. Patrick babbles something about how they must have miscommunicated and tries not to run back to the car.

There’s also no Peter at Joey’s or at Andrew’s - at least his car isn’t there, so Pat just assumes. He doesn’t want to take the time to stop and ask or take the chance on collecting an entourage. 

He’s driving in his third circle around the park when the diner occurs to him. It’s a weird place for Peter to go alone; Pat’s certainly never been there without at least one of the other guys. But Peter had said lunch, and that’s probably where they would have ended up if Pat had kept his mouth shut.

It’s worth driving past, even if just to keep himself from looking like a total creeper driving past the playground again.

  
  


Peter’s car is two spots down from the door of the diner. There’s an empty spot right next to it, like the universe’s own giant flashing arrow: “On Sale Now! Cheese Fries and Anxiety! Buy One, Get All The Drama For Free!”

He parks the car and sits there for a minute, working to get his breathing under control before he gets out of the car. He’s starting to panic, now that his moment is here, but he doesn’t want to go in there looking like he ran all the way from home. Eventually, he gives it up as a bad job and gets out of the car. It’s not like Peter’s never seen him panic before. Maybe he’ll feel sorry for him, if nothing else.

Inside, the diner is slightly fuller than he’s used to it being. Peter is holding down their usual table, way in the back, with his back to the door. Their waitress, Kate, waves at him from behind the counter as he walks; he’s grateful she doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ruin his sudden plan to sneak up on his best friend.

“That seat taken?” is legitimately the best thing he can think of when he pulls even with the table. Peter jumps and frowns, but he shakes his head “no” anyway.

“So. Um. First thing, uh, I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

Peter pushes a fry around his plate. (It doesn’t look like he’s actually eaten off it.)

“And pushed you on the floor.”

He does this weird nod/shrug combination that Pat takes as “okay”.

“Just, okay, whatever you think I did last night… I didn’t. That’s not-- I know what it looked like, okay, I do, but it wasn’t, we didn’t-- We didn’t.”

“You didn’t.” Pat can see the disbelief in his eyes even through the reflection on his glasses.

“No! You know I haven’t-- Why would--” He’s not expecting rose petals and Barry White for his first time, but he had vague ideas of it being, you know,  _ not at school _ to start with. “You really think I’d do that  _ there _ ?”

“I don’t even fucking know anymore, Pat, you’ve been all kinds of weird since those guys showed up. For all I know, quickies in back hallways are a thing you do now.”

“That’s bullshit!”

“You’ve never blinked twice at a guy in your whole life, Pat, then suddenly that asshole wanders into our lives in a stupid pair of jeans, and you’re letting him touch you and flirt with you and giggling like a 12-year old with a crush.” 

“So what, I can’t enjoy someone paying attention to me now?!”

“I’ve been paying attention to you for years and you never fucking noticed!”

“You weren’t paying attention to me last night! You were too busy sucking face with Jessica!”   
  
“So you ran off to fuck him instead?!”

“We! Weren’t! Fucking! He was letting me cry all over him!”

“What were you crying about?!”

“I was going to tell you I’m in love with you, you asshole, and then you kissed her instead!”

At this point, Pat realizes everyone in this diner is staring at them, since they’ve been half standing and shouting at each other for the last several minutes. He slides back into his seat, knowing he’s fire-engine-red from both the shouting and the sudden embarrassment. He risks a glance across the table.

Peter's looking at him like he’s grown a second head. “You what?”

“That’s why I was back in the hallway. I was having a fucking meltdown, and Pete saw me leave, and he was worried about me. He let me cry all over him, and he convinced me that I had to go back and look like everything was fine so people wouldn’t talk.”

“That didn’t work out so well.”

“Well, I didn’t hear anyone talking about me leaving the gym in tears, so he wasn’t totally wrong.”

Peter’s laugh isn’t really a laugh. “I didn’t kiss Jessica; she kissed me.”

“You didn’t stop her.”

“I didn’t know I needed to.” Which is….fair. 

“No one said I was having a completely rational reaction.”

Peter’s whole face twitches, like he’s fighting off a smile. He pushes the plate of fries to the middle of the table, pool of ketchup turned away from Pat so the non-soggy fries are closest to him. “So...you’re in love with me? Since when?”

“According to Andrew and Joey, forever. According to me, well, I just noticed on Friday.”

“Friday?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s why you were being weird Friday night.”

“I wasn’t that weird Friday.”

“You didn’t talk to me once after lunch Friday. I couldn’t figure out what I’d done to piss you off that much, and I couldn’t get you alone to ask. I was going to wait until Andrew and Joey fell asleep and ask you, but, um.”

Off the top of his head, Pat has never seen Peter Wentz blush. 

 

Until today.

 

_ Oh god. _

 

“I didn’t know what to say so you’d know I was still awake… but I didn’t want you to stop. And then you said something that I assumed was his name.”

Pat buries his face in his hands. They can barely handle the heat.

“But you said Friday, so … it wasn’t his name, was it.”

If Pat talks, he will throw up on this table. He can barely make himself shake his head “no”.

“It was mine,” Peter whispers. “You just didn’t finish it before, well. You were there.”

 

Could this day get any more embarrassing? 

 

“Pat, could you maybe look at me please?”

The answer is one hundred percent no, but somehow he’s doing it anyway. Long gone is the feeling of a hot, humid summer afternoon. The way Peter’s looking at him feels like he just nosedived into an active volcano.

What a way to go.

“Pat, that’s really fucking hot.”

A giggle that’s more relief than humor escapes him without his consent. Peter grins at him. “What were you thinking about?”

“Just an afternoon at the pool last summer,” Pat mumbles.

“The one where I’d been flirting with you all afternoon, and when I finally decided to do something about it, you ran away from me like you thought I was going to eat you?”

“How could you  _ possibly _ know that?!”

“I was trying extra-super-hard to get your attention that day. I guessed it might stand out in your memory.”

“That was  _ on purpose _ ?” Pat whisper-shrieks.

“Yes? When have I ever done any of that at the pool before or since?”

  
  


Everything Pat knows is a lie.

  
  


No wonder Andrew and Joey are so exasperated with this.

  
  


Pat wants to pursue that, sort of, just maybe not in public. And he’s got his own question that needs to be answered.

“What happened with Jessica?”

Peter shrugs. “The first thing she yelled at me was something about not kissing her right. And she was annoyed that the first thing I did after she kissed me was go looking for you. I couldn’t find you or the other guys through the whole intermission, but I saw you come back into the gym with.. _ him _ . That didn’t seem to help.”

Pat tips his head a little sideways, wanting so badly to ask why. Peter, who has always read him better than his favorite book, smiles. “She said I was sulking. She gave up on me altogether after you left, but that possibly had more to do with me ignoring her to grill Andrew and Joey about what the fuck happened.”

“Did she tell you all that at the dance?”

“No, she waited until I was driving her home. I never got a word in edgewise the whole way to her house. The last thing she said to me was ‘don’t call me again’, so I think it’s safe to say she doesn’t have any expectations for a future with me.”

He looks far too smug about the whole thing.

Pat needs to take him somewhere else pretty much immediately.   


“Wanna get out of here?”

“What time is it?”

Pat blinks at the seemingly random follow up but looks around for a clock anyway. There’s one just behind the counter. “Two-ish? I think?”

“Perfect.” Peter grins and leans across the table. “My parents are gone until at least eight.”

They trip all over each other trying to get out of the door at the same time.

 

****

 

Whoever decided to depict these moments in the movies as smooth and coordinated has never had a moment like this, Pat concludes about two minutes after they walked in the door.

To be completely honest, he didn’t really have a plan when he suggested going somewhere besides the diner. He only wanted to be somewhere with less of an audience. Where would he even start with a plan? It’s not like he has any idea what to do. Even in his head, he hasn’t gotten so far as actually kissing Peter. (He never lasts that long.)

And he’s nervous, okay? He’s kissed two whole people in his entire life, and he’s not even sure one of them truly counts. And now he’s standing outside Peter’s bedroom, in his otherwise-empty house, and what if he doesn’t do something right? What if he’s terrible at this?  

“Stop thinking and come in here.”

_ That _ he probably won’t screw up.

Peter’s made himself comfortable, most of the layers he’d been wearing at the diner piled on the floor in front of the closet, glasses who knows where. Pat’s expecting him to be on the bed already, in a hurry to get to (what Pat’s assuming is) the good stuff, but he’s not. He’s leaning against the dresser, waiting to ambush Pat before he’s even got the door all the way closed.

Pat finds himself backed into the wall, rather like his memory-fantasy from last summer. Peter’s not touching him, not yet, but Pat still feels pinned. 

He’s a little surprised that he likes that.

“So you said you were thinking about last summer by the pool. I happen to know you ran away before I got close, so I thought maybe you could tell me what you added and we’ll see how it compares to the real thing.”

The neighbors can probably see him blushing. “I didn’t add much.”

“That’s okay. I’ll can wing it from wherever you stopped. Where are we to start?”

“Like this, just...closer.”

Peter smiles, short and pleased, and steps closer and closer again until he’s as close to Pat as he can get without atomic fusion. “Hands?”

“Hmm?” Pat’s language processing centers haven’t survived the sensation overload; words are a struggle right now.

“Where are my hands?” Peter says slowly, right into his ear.

“Ohhhh.” Pat tries to answer, he really does. But he has to breathe to talk, and breathing reminds him of where he is and what’s happening to him, and then he forgets what he was going to say. He gives up and just moves Peter’s hands himself - one to his shoulder, thumb brushing his collar, and the other to the wall just above and behind his hip.

“And then?”

He’s not sure he could explain this part to Peter without spontaneously combusting due to embarrassment, so he just leans his head back against the wall and tips it to one side in the best hint he can come up with.

It’s a good hint. Peter’s breath raises goosebumps down his neck, down his arm, across his chest. “Interesting choice.” His lips move against Pat’s skin when he talks, a texture and sensation fantasy hadn’t come close to getting right. He doesn’t shiver; no, that’s not the right word at all. It’s all his nerve endings everywhere playing an excellent game of “telephone”, whispering “do you know what’s happening up there” to each other all at the same time.

Whatever it is, it encourages Peter to do it again. He’s so slow, so deliberate, so careful. Every brush of lips is too much and not enough, searing skin but over too soon.

He’s driving Pat crazy.

“Then what?”

No, no, this part is too embarrassing. He can’t.

“C’mon, Pat, you can tell me.” 

How his teeth even come in contact with Pat’s skin saying that is something Pat will (when he remembers this later) never understand. He just knows that they do and that something about his reaction gives him away. (The death grip on Peter’s side? The choked breathing? The whimpery noise? All of the above?)

“Ohhhh.” Peter barely vocalizes it, so quiet Pat can hardly hear it over the blood rushing in his ears. It’s a small word, a small sound, but it’s dripping with an  _ understanding _ that Pat is not prepared to deal with.

He doesn’t have time to do more than acknowledge it in his mind before Peter presses just that much closer and bites him, right above his collar. 

Pat’s knees resign their job, effective immediately. Only the pressure of Peter against him is keeping him vertical.

“Jesus, Pat.” Peter sounds like he feels, all nerve endings and vertigo. “What next?”

“I didn’t- That’s all.” His eyes squeeze shut so hard he can see stars.

“Oh my god, Pat, you’re gonna kill me,” Peter mumbles into his shoulder. Pat can’t tell who’s shaking; it could be either of them; maybe it’s both. “I haven’t even kissed you yet, what the hell.”

He’s been purposefully not thinking about that for the last couple of days; it’s one step too far. He didn’t have a comparison point for anything else he’s thought about it, so it had never mattered who he was picturing; it had all “felt” the same in his imagination. But he has kissed other people, and those experiences were very underwhelming. He’d idly hoped kissing Peter would be better, but he couldn’t identify what that would even mean, how it would be different.

He wants very, very badly to find out.

“Please” is all he can get out before his nerves choke him up again. 

The hand on his shoulder moves so slowly he swears he can feel Peter’s individual fingerprints. One fingertip slides along his bottom lip, startling him into opening his eyes. 

It’s not like he’d forgotten how close Peter was (that would be impossible), but he still wasn’t expecting the only thing he could see to be Peter’s eyes. Liquid gold, sparkling in a way that usually means Pat’s going to get in trouble later - the sun should be so lucky as to put out that much heat. 

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do this.”

Maybe all first kisses are supposed to be soft, gentle, tentative, uncertain. Maybe they are - but this one is not. Pat feels like he’s been knocked down by a wave, rolled in the surf, and caught in a rip tide. 

When Peter pulls away from him, the first thing he notices is that his mouth tastes different. He can’t help giggling at the randomness of it. Why it’s different sweeps over him like a trailing wave. And now he can’t focus on anything but how badly somebody needs to touch his dick five minutes ago. He digs his fingers into Peter’s back, rubbing against him, losing his train of thought (again) as he realizes what exactly he’s rubbing up against.

“Okay, okay, hold on, I’m gonna-” Peter’s not really making any sense to him until there’s space between them, sudden chill in place of too much body heat. He wants to argue, wants the heat back, but there are hands fumbling with the button on his jeans. A distant part of his brain observes that it really shouldn’t be this complicated, but Pat really stops listening when his jeans come undone enough that Peter thinks he can get his hands inside them. 

That is  _ very  _ different from his own hands, holyfuckingshit. Peter’s skin feels different, his hands are rough in different places, he moves when Pat isn’t expecting it, ohmygod _ ohmygod _ **ohmygod** .

Words are no longer a thing his vocal cords know how to make, which is too bad because he thinks it’s probably polite to warn someone before you come all over them. 

His throat hurts - god he hopes he wasn’t embarrassingly loud. Peter is more slumped than pressed against him, one slimysticky hand still half under the waistband of Pat’s jeans. His hair is tickling the underside of Pat’s chin. Neither of them is breathing quite right.

“Pat?”

“Mmm?”

“Can we maybe take some clothes off next time?”

Pat’s giggles nearly unbalance both of them. There’s some jostling, near misses with elbows and knees as Peter tries to wipe his hands on Pat’s clothes instead of his own. Pat pulls his hair to distract him, and then they both get distracted kissing again like it might the third time before they get any clothes off.

  
  
  


The door opens, bouncing off the wall with excessive force, admitting Joey already loudly mid-sentence about movies playing this afternoon.

He stops walking abruptly; Andrew crashes into the back of him, sending them both stumbling further into the room and a lot closer to Peter and Pat than Joey would like based on the shriek of horror.

There are far too many seconds of very awkward silence as they all stare at each other, waiting for someone else to decide what to do now.

Andrew recovers first (a surprise to no one). “Okay, we’re very happy you two have gotten your shit together, but let’s never speak of this again.” He steers a flailing Joey back out the door into the hall. “See you in the morning.”

“Use protection!” Joey yells as the door closes again.

Pat can’t decide if he wants to laugh or hide from his friends for a week.

Peter is clearly not struggling with the same problem. “You heard the man, get your clothes off, Patrick Stump.”

“That is not what he said!”

“It was strongly implied. Get naked and let’s see if I can’t make you forget that just happened.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Swing by [my tumblr](leyley09.tumblr.com) this week for my special "this is why I live 900 miles from my family in a warmer climate" rants, it'll be a good time. Or distract me with stuff. I would really appreciate that.
> 
> [Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/leyley09fic/playlist/2doPVQUf4MRrnvKhn4w05K?si=pHqPOKLyTietyu5Gg83IAA)


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He doesn’t get Pete. He really doesn’t. All the evidence he’s been given says Pete was trying to get the Patrick he first met back. For all intents and purposes, he had one last night, and he’s already been replaced. He should be angry, disappointed, sad - something - but he couldn’t be more thrilled about it.
> 
> That doesn’t make any fucking sense.
> 
> Patrick knows - he’s been replaced and he’s fucking pissed about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is the only thing I meant to do today that I've actually completed. I need a vacation to recover from my "vacation". (Life tip - weddings are fucking exhausting.)
> 
> And thank you to everyone who commented so nicely on last week's chapter. Those made me smile while I was dealing with too much drama. You're all wonderful and lovely, and I'm grateful to have you in my life. <3

 

“I don’t recognize any of these movie titles.”

“Maybe movies aren’t a thing that overlaps universes.”

“Shhh. Other people don’t need to hear about that.”

Patrick pulls his coat tighter, turning away from the wind. He doesn’t care which movie they watch; he just wishes the guys would pick something so they could go inside already.

Pete’s still being weird. It’s hard to avoid someone in a small hotel room, but somehow Pete has managed. He hasn’t said a word to Patrick all morning. Andy hasn’t helped, ignoring them all in favor of his research. Joe was asleep most of the time, but his suggestion of a movie might balance that out. For an hour and a half, maybe it won’t feel like Pete’s ignoring him.

The other guys finally decide on something based entirely on the amount of flames on the movie poster. It’s also got more guns and cars than boobs, so the movie might not completely suck. They go inside to buy their tickets and stumble across Joey and Andrew in the concessions line.

“Hey guys.” Andy high-fives them both. “Where’s the other half of your quartet?”

Joey full-body twitches, almost knocking a popcorn bucket from the hands of a smaller child. “Oh god, don’t ask.”

Andrew rolls his eyes. “Plug your ears, Joseph.” He waits until Joey has his fingers firmly in his ears before continuing, “we, uh, interrupted them in the middle of, uh, something, so we’re on our own today.”

“I’m sorry, you what?”

The rest of his guys jump, like they’d forgotten he was there.

Andrew glances sideways, almost too fast to see. One could get the impression he was looking at Joey…. Except that’s also where Pete’s standing, and Patrick wasn’t born yesterday.

“We went by Peter’s to see if they wanted to co-- I mean, if they wanted to join us. They, uh, they were, um--”

“They were totally fucking, weren’t they?” Joe is delighted. And loud. Joey flinches and starts humming  _ Enter Sandman _ . “That’s fantastic, isn’t that fantastic, Pete?”

Pete is...beaming? He looks like this is the best news he’s heard in his whole life. “So they sorted out the whole, uh, thing from last night then?” His side glance at Patrick does not sneak past anyone’s notice, not even Joey, who has moved on to the solo from  _ Sad But True _ . Patrick idly wonders if the kid will make it all the way through the Black Album before this conversation is over. He also thinks that if Peter’s forgiven Pat this fast for sleeping with Pete, of all people, he is a better man than Patrick.

“I guess so.” Andrew shrugs. “We didn’t stay long enough for a conversation.”

Joey stops humming (having skipped ahead to  _ The Unforgiven _ ) and interrupts before Joe can ask any more questions. “Can we stop talking about this now? Our movie’s gonna start.”

Pete and Joe wave them off with comments Patrick has stopped listening to. He’s very confused.

Andy herds him into their theater, hands him a bucket of popcorn and a pop, and proceeds to ignore him. They’ve only been seated for a couple of minutes when the lights dim and the previews start playing.

Patrick tunes out the stuff on screen, munches on his popcorn, and  _ dwells _ .

He doesn’t get Pete. He really doesn’t. All the evidence he’s been given says Pete was trying to get the Patrick he first met back. For all intents and purposes, he had one last night, and he’s already been replaced. He should be angry, disappointed, sad -  _ something _ \- but he couldn’t be more thrilled about it.

_ That doesn’t make any fucking sense. _

Patrick knows - he’s been replaced and he’s fucking pissed about it.

 

Onscreen, a car blows up, flinging shrapnel for blocks. (That’s what Patrick’s brain feels like right now.)

Joe was right - he is a Grade A idiot.

He’s not mad because Pete’s debauching high school students. He’s mad because if Pete’s canoodling in dressing rooms with a Patrick Stump, it’s supposed to be  _ him _ , goddammit.

He never thought it could be him, not back when he was actually thinking things like that about Pete. He remembers coming to this conclusion one night after a not-completely shitty show in a backwater dive bar when he opened their tiny trailer to start loading equipment and found it already occupied by Pete and a tall, dark and gangly farm boy. He put all those half-formed hopes and fuzzy daydreams into a box, put that box into a box, put  _ that _ box into a very deep hole, poured concrete over the top of the whole thing, and that was that. 

Not thinking about it was working beautifully….until Tuesday when everything in his world went sideways. 

He doesn’t know why Pete never did anything about it, anything real anyway. (Patrick knows himself, knows he probably wasn’t very subtle about his crush.) Instead, he waits until they’re in some alternate universe to hook up with a Patrick Stump.

Here, in this just-slightly-off Wilmette, he’s being forced to accept that his initial premise was wrong. He’s spent all these years thinking he wasn’t Pete’s type, but it turns out he’s just not the right version of himself.

By the time the movie ends, he’s worked himself into a lather. He needs to know why Pete isn’t bothered by losing Pat and, more importantly, what Pat has that he doesn’t.

Conveniently, there’s an alley between the movie theater and where Joe parked the van. He drags Pete in with him, waving off Andy and Joe. “We’ll just be a minute.”

No one looks like they believe him, including Pete.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Patrick?”

“With me? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Let’s start with you. Everything was fine yesterday, up until the intermission, and ever since then you’ve been acting like I created cancer! I don’t even know what I did!”

“Wow, Pat that unmemorable then? That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I know what you did, Pete! I saw you in there with him.”

Pete blinks slowly at him. The confusion in his eyes only dims slightly. “Trick, what do you think we were doing?”

“I wasn’t born yesterday, Pete - all cuddled together in the dark with a lot of heavy breathing? If you weren’t, then you were about to.”

“Patrick,” Pete says slowly, the way you talk to crazy people or rabid dogs, “that kid was crying his eyes out in there. He’d just worked up the nerve to tell Peter how he feels about him, and then he saw Peter kissing his date. I know I’ve done some shit you don’t approve of, but I’m not into that kind of crying during sex. Most importantly though,” he holds a hand up to cut off Patrick’s interruption, “I didn’t follow him in there for that. He was starting to meltdown leaving the gym, and I went in there to see if he was okay, which he very much was not.”

“But-- but--”

“But what? It ‘looked bad’? So what? Why didn’t you just come in and yell at me like you usually do when you walk in on me doing something you think is stupid?”

He wonders if this is what quicksand is supposed to feel like, like everything under your feet is shifting constantly, like the whole world has become unstable. Or maybe it’s just him.

“I couldn’t, I couldn’t go in there, I was too mad.”

“So you’re the right kind of mad to yell when you actually walk in on me doing that, but the one time I’m actually not, you’re too mad to yell?”

Patrick presses his eyes closed with his hands. This has all gone terribly pear-shaped. “It wasn’t what I thought you were doing that made me mad, it was who it was with.”

“What’s wrong with Pat?”

“I don’t know, what’s wrong with me?”

“What?”

“He’s some alternate universe knock-off of me, but he’s okay to fool around with in dressing rooms, when you’ve never once seriously suggested that you’d want to do that with me.”

“I wasn’t fooling around with him!”

“Well I didn’t know that last night and that’s why I was mad!”

“Patrick, since when have you been interested in that.” It’s not even said like a question, like Pete’s trying to remind him of a point of fact.

“Pretty much from the beginning, but I stopped thinking it was a possibility after a while, and then I stopped thinking about it altogether.”

“Are you fucking serious right now?”

“Yes! I’m sorry I didn’t understand what you’ve been trying to tell me for apparently forever, but I’m pretty sure I’m in--”

  
  


The bus hits a vicious pothole, swaying nauseatingly on its chassis. Patrick catches at the edge of his bunk, hoping he’s not going to roll out onto the floor (again). This is...not where he was a moment ago, he’s quite sure of it. For one thing, he’s certain he was standing up. 

And shouting.

At Pete.

_ “I’m pretty sure I’m in--” _

He needs to find Pete.

The door to the front lounge slides open just wide enough to admit Pete (and confirm it’s nighttime). Pete’s carrying some stuff in a poorly balanced pile, a book or box maybe, some kind of bowl. He brings with him the smell of damp plants and blown-out matches.

“Pete?”   


Even his whisper is enough to startle Pete. It’s dim enough with the door closed again that Patrick can’t see the way he fumbles the stack of stuff, but he can hear it.

“Oh hey Trickster. Didn’t know you were up.”

“I wasn’t. I don’t think. Were we, were we fighting earlier?”

“Hmm? Uh, no, not that I’m aware of.”

“I could have sworn I was shouting at you a minute ago.”

“Yelling at me even in your dreams, Patrick? I feel so special.” Patrick can practically taste the self-deprecation.

Patrick doesn’t like this - not Pete’s tone, not this feeling that he’s forgetting something. It’s just there, right out of reach.

“Go back to sleep, Patrick. I’m sure you’ll figure out what you’re mad about in the morning.”

“Are you sleeping tonight?”

“That remains to be seen.”

“Try? Please?”

“Sure thing, buddy.”

  
  


****

 

The next several days pass in the most normal sort of tedium. They go from interview to photo shoot to show to bus to meeting to interview to show. It’s becoming frightfully routine. 

The days are nothing worth talking about, but the nights….

He dreams -- of high school gymnasiums, of badly lit basements, of outdated diners, of the ugliest hotel room he’s ever seen, of a version of himself in terrible glasses. He dreams, in vivid Technicolor, of a school dance right out of a John Hughes film. He dreams of autumn sunshine and chocolate cake crumbs, flickering fluorescents and blinding rage, cold rain and cracked vinyl. He dreams of a song with a bass line that echoes in his soul, even when he’s awake.

He’s never had dreams like this before. Usually, he’s left with vague impressions if he remembers anything at all. These dreams feel like...they feel like memories.

He would think he’s going crazy, but then he picks up the guitar in the back lounge and plays an entire song he can’t remember hearing before purely from muscle memory. He starts writing down his dreams, as best he can. Eventually, he has to admit that he’s either losing his damn mind, or he and his band were magically transported to another universe.

No one else appears to have noticed. No one asks any leading questions or hints at anything. No one seems any different - no one except Patrick.

 

****

 

Patrick trips over his own two feet coming into the studio control room. He  _ knows _ that bass line. The sense memory of the last time he heard it (anywhere besides his own head) almost knocks him on his ass. 

“What is that?”

Pete shrugs but doesn’t stop. “I don’t know. It’s been stuck in my head for a while. You like it?”

He can’t help the grin that breaks across his face. “I may have something it would be perfect for. Give me a minute.”

His memories of their trip to another universe are still somewhat spotty, but one of the things that did make it through intact is his favorite Coral Fixation song. He dreamt it for a dozen nights straight before he finally put a demo version together in GarageBand just to get it out of his head. (That didn’t work, but whatever.) He couldn’t remember what they called it, not after days of trying, so it’s still saved under the name he gave it to remind himself where it came from:  _ Dance _ . 

He doesn’t actually have to add Pete’s bass line to the track (since it’s already in there), but he’d rather not explain why that is, so he plugs his headphones in and pokes at his computer for a reasonable amount of time instead.

“Okay, listen to this.”

Pete takes his headphones and closes his eyes as he starts the track again. Less than a minute in, he cracks one eye opened and asks “does this have lyrics?”

“Some.” He thinks he remembers most of them, but there are still some gaps.

“Can I hear or see them? Because I think I might have some ideas too.”

He hasn’t recorded the lyrics yet, so he has to dig his notebook out of his bag. Pete unplugs the headphones, tapping his fingers on the table like he’s playing the melody while he waits impatiently.

“Alright, start it.”

He closes his eyes for a second, just to help him focus on the music, and the inside of his eyelids are painted with a crowd of screaming, bouncing teenagers in a gymnasium.

“ _ She says she’s no good with words but I’m worse…” _

At the second verse, he realizes Pete is quietly singing along with him. Which is interesting, because he never opened his notebook. That realization freezes his tongue mid-word.

Pete’s smiling at him when he opens his eyes, the small quiet one that’s just for when Patrick’s caught an inside joke. “I think we need to have a chat about how you know that song, Trickster.”

“Short answer, I dreamt it.”

“And the long answer?”

Patrick watches him fidget nervously, eyes darting towards his bag in the corner where a tiny corner of a familiar old book is just visible.

“The long answer….you magicked us into an alternate universe, and I’m stealing it from another version of us.”

Pete doesn’t even have the decency to look shocked or surprised or even a little taken aback. “I didn’t think you remembered.”

“I didn’t think you did either.”

Pete’s eyebrows say “that’s fair” for him since he’s too busy staring at the floor. Patrick’s got questions, but he wants to see what it is Pete’s working up the nerve to say first. It takes him a couple of minutes to get to it, but it’s not like sitting here watching him is a hardship. He’s frowning to himself a little bit about all the time he’s wasted not watching Pete when the question finally comes.

“How did we get back? I don’t remember doing any counter spells or anything like that. I just ‘woke up’ back on the bus like nothing had happened, in the middle of the spell. I didn’t think it had worked until I started dreaming about everything.”

“We didn’t do any spells. We were standing on the street, and then  _ poof _ ” -- Patrick mimes explosions with his hands -- “we were back on the bus.”

“We were just standing on the street?”

“Yep.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes?”

“Because that night on the bus, you asked me if we’d been fighting. I didn’t remember a fight then, but I think I have a fuzzy recollection of maybe not a fight exactly, but at least a very loud discussion.”

“Oh, well, yeah. That too.”

“Do you remember what we were talking about? I think you were mad at me.”

Patrick really doesn’t want to get into that again. That was a shitty several hours, and he’s ashamed of both why and how he overreacted.

“Breaks over, bitches! Your drummer has been refueled, so we are ready to roll!”

Joe drops a bottle of pop into Pete’s lap and collapses onto the sofa between them. Patrick barely manages to save his laptop from crashing to the floor. Before Pete can protest as he obviously wants to, several other people wander in, filling the room with unwanted witnesses.

Pete subsides into his corner of the sofa, pouting. Patrick, on the other hand, can’t remember the last time he was so delighted to see all these people, even the ones he’s never seen before. 

Awkward conversation avoided - for now.

As they get Andy set up for another take, Patrick pretends he can’t see Pete watching him, that he doesn’t know Pete is plotting how to get him alone to finish their conversation. Is he really ready to have this conversation here and now, in the “real” world? 

All he’s got to go on are the opinions he heard in that other universe. He based all his conclusions on that evidence, and maybe that doesn’t translate here. Maybe that other universe skewed his vision, his interpretation of half-remembered events.

What if the Pete he’s got here doesn’t feel the same way about him?

Is he prepared to take that risk right now?

47,000 questions with no answers; it’s giving him a headache.

Eventually, when Andy’s on his fourth or seventh take (whatever, he’s distracted), he gives up. He’s not going to worry about this today. He will worry about it when and/or if Pete brings it up again. There’s a lot going on in their lives right now; maybe Pete will forget it about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, chapter mood board by the lovely and talented [@shark-myths](http://shark-myths.tumblr.com/) who I wouldn't want to do this without. 
> 
> [Tumblr](leyley09.tumblr.com)
> 
> [Spotify Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/leyley09fic/playlist/2doPVQUf4MRrnvKhn4w05K?si=pHqPOKLyTietyu5Gg83IAA)


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of course, Pete doesn’t forget this. Patrick’s seen him forget birthdays, anniversaries, minor holidays, plans, where he parked his car, if he’d driven a car, and a pizza baking in an oven not six feet away from him.
> 
> This conversation apparently ranks higher than all those things.
> 
> (That’s only mostly terrifying.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all, this is essentially the end of our story (Ch 12 is a much shorter epilogue thing). I am sad because I am always sad when something ends, but never fear, there is always something coming next (as soon as I can dredge up the emotional energy to start it).
> 
> I hope to continue to see some of you floating around my tumblr like the blessings you have been. And if you're coming into this late, come by anyway, new friends are always welcome!

 

Of course, Pete doesn’t forget  _ this _ . Patrick’s seen him forget birthdays, anniversaries, minor holidays, plans, where he parked his car, if he’d driven a car, and a pizza baking in an oven not six feet away from him. 

This conversation apparently ranks higher than all those things.

(That’s only  _ mostly _ terrifying.)

After two weeks of Patrick dodging Pete at every opportunity, Pete is clearly starting to get desperate. Two nights ago, he’d tried to ambush Patrick in the bathroom of their personality-less corporate rental and only succeeded in scaring Andy half to death when he’d discovered him asleep in the bathtub at three in the morning.

With this knowledge, Patrick shouldn’t be so surprised to see Pete inching out from under the control room sofa five minutes after everyone else has left for the day.

He hadn’t seen Pete in a while and had assumed he’d taken off on some mysterious errand. As everyone else wrapped up, he’d brushed off all invitations to “go out and do stuff”. Time alone is too hard to come by.

Should‘ve known it was too good to be true.

“Fuck, they took long enough, didn’t they? I’ve been under there for the better part of an hour.” Pete is covered with evidence that the cleaning staff don’t regularly vacuum under the sofa, dust and crumbs and carpet fuzz.

Sometimes, it’s very tiring to be Pete’s audience. He knows Pete is waiting for him to ask why he was under the sofa; he refuses as a matter of principle. “That’s disgusting, dude.”

Pete’s reflection in the window frowns and pauses at picking dust bunnies out of his hair. “Well, if you’d  _ talk _ to me, Patrick, I wouldn’t have to resort to such extremes.”

Patrick looks back at the guitar in his lap. He can’t exactly deny that; he hasn’t been subtle in his dodging. People three states away can tell he’s been avoiding Pete.

“At first, I figured you must have been yelling at me about being stuck because of the spell. But then I thought you wouldn’t need to get me away from Joe and Andy to yell about that. So it must have been something else.”

This conversation is happening, and it is happening  _ now _ ; the only way to get away from it is to deliberately walk away from Pete. 

What’ll get him the worse reaction - completely refusing to talk about this or telling Pete how he feels?

He wishes he knew a good psychic.

He can’t make this choice. He physically can’t. Anxiety is climbing up his throat, stealing his ability to speak.

The only solution is let someone or something else make the decision for him. Pete can’t, since he’s obviously biased towards Patrick explaining himself. There’s no one else in the room, and leaving to go find someone else will make the choice himself, so that’s out.

Obviously, the universe will need to make this decision. It decided where and when to take them, and it decided not to let him tell Pete how he feels in that place when he was actually prepared to do so. It can bear the blame for whatever happens next.

So. He’s going to glance up at the glass in front of them. If Pete’s looking at him, he’ll talk. If he’s not, he’ll put the guitar down and walk out of here.

 

Count of three.

  
  
  


One.

  
  
  
  
  


Two.

  
  
  
  
  


Three.

  
  


He looks towards the glass carefully, barely moving his head so as not to draw Pete’s attention with movement and invalidate the results, and looks directly into Pete’s eyes.

Well, the reflection of them anyway.   
  


(Fuck the universe.)   
  


“I wasn’t yelling at you about the spell. I was mad about - how much do you remember about the dance?”

“Uh, I remember that I still hate gymnasiums. You were really nervous before the show, but you really nailed pretending to be that other guy, and I remember following Pat into the back hallway to make sure he was okay.”

“That’s it?”

“And I remember you being pissed as hell at me for the rest of the night, but I seem to have a gap on whatever it is I did to deserve that.”

As if he wasn’t already feeling guilty enough about that.

“You didn’t do anything, as it turns out. I just thought you did and went full-on drama queen about it.”

A distant passing siren distracts him enough to look away from the glass. In that brief moment, Pete moves closer and turns away from the glass himself, leaning against the control board, foot tapping against the leg of Patrick’s stool.

“So what did you think I’d done?”

Patrick hates the flush he can feel crawling across his face.

Pete smirks. “Something to do with sex, then. Hmmm…”

Patrick can see the equation working itself out in his head. It’s like watching a car fishtail in slow motion - is it going to recover? Are you about to watch a horrible accident?

“Patrick,” Pete eventually says, in something like horror. “You’ve got to know I wouldn’t do that to you, not in any universe.”

“That’s the whole goddamn problem, Pete! You wouldn’t, and you haven’t, and I’d really like you to!”

He hadn’t really visualized how this might go, since he’d been trying to avoid it altogether, but he has to admit he was expecting more of a response. Or, you know, a response period. Something more than this staring like he’s been yelling in a language Pete doesn’t understand.

( _ “he always believes whatever “fact” means you care the least about him” _ )

(Maybe he’s not the only one who’s been making assumptions.)

“Pete, I have it on good authority that we recently had a demonstration of what I used to look like around you all the time, so you can’t be seriously be implying you didn’t know that was ever a possibility?”

“What?”

“Did you think I looked like that all the time, around everybody?”

“Yes, actually, I did. You looked like that every time I was around. I just assumed that was just the way you were.”

Patrick turns to set his guitar aside, before he’s tempted to throw it and/or hit Pete with it. “Well it wasn’t. That was the “ohmygod Pete’s here” Special Edition Patrick Stump.”

When he turns back, Pete’s on the floor, looking a little like a candle that has melted down on itself. The furrows between his eyebrows are giving Patrick sympathy pains.

“Why did he go away?”

He almost misses Pete’s mumblewhisper under the volume of his own starting-to-panic thoughts. “Why did who go away?”

“Special Edition Patrick.” Pete fidgets with the ragged hem of his jeans, most of his face hidden behind a bent knee. “You- you don’t do that anymore.”

“I built up an immunity.” He talks over Pete’s snort. “No, I’m serious. I didn’t think you were interested in me, so I stopped letting myself react. It was just easier that way. I thought I’d gotten over it-” A flash of sense memory, the bitter bile taste of betrayal and rage trips up his tongue.

“You weren’t mad at me -- you were  _ jealous _ .” The marvel, the wonder in Pete’s voice is the only thing that stops him from snapping in embarrassment, as if the mere idea that Patrick might be jealous over him is a never-dreamt-of possibility.

“Well, yeah.” Patrick tries to shrug off the last of the embarrassment, looking away in hopes of pulling his face together. “I thought you’d picked him instead of me, and I couldn’t figure out what he had that I didn’t.”

This time, Pete’s moved from his slump to up on his knees, just outside what most people would call Patrick’s personal space. “Aside from the nerves to tell his best friend he likes him right away? Not a damn fucking thing.”

Patrick reaches out to shove him and his too-amused-with-himself smile, just out of habit, but Pete grabs hold of his wrist before he gets too far. “We’re not very good at this, are we?”

“Guess not.” Patrick tugs against Pete’s grip a little - not to get free, but to ‘suggest’ that Pete come closer.

Pete obligingly shuffles closer by maybe an inch. “If it hasn’t been made clear to you already, I’m pretty partial to Patrick Stumps, all editions and versions. You’re the only place that feels like home.”

Patrick loves him, but sometimes he’s kind of annoying. (And he means every word of that.)

If Pete won’t come to him, then Patrick will have to go to him. He feels like he’s waited long enough. He pitches forward with no warning, catching himself with Pete’s face.

It’s been a long time since he thought about this, day dreamed about the possibility of being one of the someones who got to leave visible marks on Pete, but he doesn’t remember there being quite so much laughing from Pete.

He won’t stand for that and doubles down, putting extra effort into making this a first kiss Pete isn’t going to forget. But Pete’s just  _ that much _ too far away, and Patrick is rapidly losing his balance.

When gravity wins, Patrick is fully expecting to collide with the floor. His head spins as Pete catches him and twists him in one move; he comes to a stop up against the control board. (That’s probably going to bruise.)

He stutters and stumbles, attempting to get an actual sentence out, but he only manages a choked “what?” when Pete finally gets as close to him as he was hoping. But still on his knees.

Pete just grins up at him, somehow both smug and giddy at the same time.

“You didn’t think I did this on stage  _ just _ for the screaming, did you?”

He had thought exactly that, thank you very much, but he won’t from now on. He’s going to have to make it an official stage rule -- “Pete stays  _ off _ his knees” -- just for the sake of his own sanity and ability to focus.

“I have to say, I’ve thought about this kind of a lot. It’s usually darker in my imagination.”

Patrick blinks his way through a series of images, a visual list of all the dark places they spend so much time in - nearly pitch black side stages, dimly lit rest areas and truck stops, the back lounge of the bus after everyone else is asleep. 

“Next time,” he croaks out in what he hopes is English. It must be; it makes Pete’s fingers fumble at the button of his jeans. It looks accidental, but the slide of his fingers has just a bit too much pressure behind it.

Pete smirks at the noise he makes. “Promise?” he asks, eyes twinkling through his lashes and ridiculous fringe.

“Fuck yes. Swear on your magic book.”

Pete finally works the button loose and fiddles with the zipper - not unzipping it, just tugging at the tab. “I think maybe you should tell me about that.”

Patrick drags his eyes away from Pete’s too-close-but-not-doing-anything hands to his face. “Tell you what?” 

“Next time. Tell me what next time will be like.”

“I, uh. I’m not really good at that.” Patrick can tell the difference between this flush and the one from earlier. It’s a totally different kind of embarrassment.

“You know, I might have guessed that you’d think so,” Pete says, still smirking. “I also know that you didn’t think you could sing that well either, and look how that’s worked out. So maybe-” he tugs the zipper just enough to free a couple of teeth “-you should give me the benefit of the doubt and try for me.”

The zipper stops moving. It’s clear from Pete’s expectant look that if Patrick wants that zipper undone, he’s going to have to say  _ something _ , even if he thinks he sounds stupid.

“Okay, okay. Um.” Why can he suddenly think of  _ nothing _ to say? He squeezes his eyes closed, trying to focus some thoughts. He used to think of this on the regular, so there’s got to be something… OH. “So, um, maybe we’ll be on the bus and I’ll be working on something on my computer, something I’ve been working on for hours, so it’ll be really late. Everyone else will have gone to bed a long time ago, but of course you’re not sleeping.” He peeks at Pete to gauge his response.

Pete looks like he’s won the lottery. He pulls the zipper open a centimeter further - and stops.

“So you’ll come back into the lounge to see what I’m doing and decide to interrupt me. You’ll try to get my attention, but I’ve got headphones on and I’m really focused, so I don’t see you. You’ll get annoyed and decide that I’ve worked long enough and I should be paying attention to you, so you’ll come over and climb into my lap.”

Pete has definitely forgotten he’s meant to be doing something else right now. This must not be going too badly. Patrick wiggles his hips, just to remind him, and he’s rewarded with the rest of the zipper being opened.

“At first, I’ll probably be annoyed that you interrupted me, so you’ll have to distract me.”

“How should I do that?” Pete tugs him away from the counter’s edge enough to get his jeans and underwear down his legs.

“Kiss me. But not on the mouth. I’ll still be talking, so you’ll have to kiss whatever you can reach instead.”

Pete licks his lips and leans in to kiss his thigh, neatly avoiding his dick altogether. He keeps doing it, moving around erratically - hips, stomach, thighs. “Keep talking. What next?”

“Once I’ve stopped bitching, you’ll kiss me until you’re out of breath. You’ll be squirming around, since god knows you can’t sit still, and you’ll have to decide if you want to come like that or if there’s something else you want instead.”

Pete’s given up on the kissing, leaning his head against his leg and breathing heavily, lost in his own imagination. When he notices Patrick’s stopped talking, he makes a noticeable effort to focus. “There’s definitely something else I want instead.”

He takes hold of Patrick’s dick, stroking slowly. ( _Fucking_ _finally_.) “I think maybe you should stop talking now and let me do this, or I’m going to get distracted.”

Patrick has absolutely no problem with that, and he’d say so, but Pete’s mouth is everything it should be plus some so he’s forgotten what they were talking about anyway.

He knows people make jokes about drummer’s rhythm, but bass player’s rhythm should get a lot more attention, holy motherfucking hell. He has a passing thought that Pete is probably better at this when he’s less desperate. It gets brushed aside by a very repetitive line of swear words when Pete presses a knuckle up behind his balls and his knees nearly give out.

Pete’s face is nearly dripping with spit, and he’s not being as careful with his teeth as he could be, and this sloppy blow job is the hottest thing that’s ever happened to him, and it is not going to last much longer if Pete keeps doing  _ that _ .

He thinks he warns Pete; he means to. He knows he let go of the edge of the control board and grabbed hold of Pete’s shoulder instead, but after that, everything goes a little fuzzy.

He’s impressed he’s still standing afterwards, to be quite honest. 

It takes him a second to get his eyes open. His eyelashes feel stuck together, and his eyelids weight about forty pounds a piece.

It’s worth the effort, though. Pete looks… Pete looks like every dirty fantasy Patrick’s ever had rolled into one. Sweaty, lips covered in his own spit and Patrick’s come, almost as flushed as Patrick himself - it’s a good look on him, and Patrick has every intention of seeing it a thousand times and in every possible variation.

He also looks like if Patrick doesn’t get his shit together and return the favor there’s going to be a problem.

He pushes Pete backwards onto the floor, following him down to fight with the stupid fucking button fly on the girls jeans Pete thought would be a good idea to wear today of all days.   


“I wasn’t really expecting  _ this _ when I got dressed, okay, so cut me some slack.”

(Apparently he was saying some of that out loud.)

He can’t be bothered to tease Pete in the same way Pete teased him. Maybe that’ll be next time. This time, he really has to get Pete’s dick in his mouth in the next two seconds; he doesn’t even want to consider the alternatives.

“Don’t be fancy, Trick, I won’t-- just-- fuck, do that again!”

Seconds, minutes, eons pass. He loses track, paying more attention to the taste, the smell, the feel, the sounds of the man underneath him. You can’t really imagine any of those things, not completely, not until you’ve experienced them with the person in your imagination. 

Every daydream he’d ever had about Pete disintegrates in the face of actually having him.

He’s not as confident in his ability to swallow as Pete appears to have been, and he’d rather not ruin the moment throwing up. It seems a better option to finish him with his hand and suck a very obvious mouth-shaped mark just above his belly button.

  
  


They lay on the floor, catching their breath. Patrick’s pulled his jeans back into place, since he’s not about to put his bare ass on this carpet, but they’re both still kind of a mess.

“You do realize if we get caught on the bus, Andy and Joe will probably kill us.”

“Probably?” Patrick scoffs. “More like definitely.”

“You’ll have to be a lot quieter then.” 

“Me? Have you heard yourself? You never shut up!”

Pete’s too busy laughing to defend himself further, so Patrick has no choice but to try to smother him with his own hoodie to make him stop. He loses that battle, barely even on purpose. Pinned under Pete Wentz is not exactly a punishment.

“Can we get out of here before someone wonders why the lights are still on?”

Pete sighs exaggeratedly. “I suppose we could go traumatize our friends with your screaming.”

He dodges Patrick’s shove, rolling away and bouncing to his feet in a move that would sprain Patrick in half a dozen places. 

“C’mon, Trickalicious, I wanna see if your freckles taste any different than the rest of you.”

Patrick takes several deep breaths, reminds himself that he has to walk out onto the street in order to get somewhere else, and thinks about gross things for a minute before he follows.

 

****

 

Far too early the next morning, Patrick is fighting the packaging on a tea bag when Joe comes into the kitchen. None of them are very functional before noon, besides Andy who definitely doesn’t count as he is a magnificent freak of nature. He takes his steeping tea to the table while Joe fights with the silverware drawer, two cabinets, and the refrigerator in an attempt to make a bowl of cereal.

They sit in mostly silence while Patrick sips his tea and burns his fingers on a pop tart and Joe tries not to drop his spoon into his lap. 

Pete wanders in a few minutes later, slightly more functional than Joe but less clothed. He drapes himself over Patrick’s back, face in his neck and arms so tightly around his throat that Patrick gives up drinking for the duration. He mumbles something that even Patrick can’t interpret.

Joe barely looks up from his cereal.

After a minute, Pete peels himself away, taking one of Patrick’s pop tarts with him as he goes to hog the bathroom for an indefinite period.

“Nice to see you two sorted your shit out.”

“Do I even want to know how you figured that out?”

“Probably not.”

  
  
  


At the studio later, he’ll play everyone the rough demo of that Coral Fixation song, see if Pete can fill in the missing lyrics. 

 

Maybe Andy and Joe will recognize it too.

  
  


Maybe not. 

  
  


You can never tell with these things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Tumblr](leyley09.tumblr.com)
> 
> [Spotify Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/leyley09fic/playlist/2doPVQUf4MRrnvKhn4w05K?si=pHqPOKLyTietyu5Gg83IAA)
> 
> Mood board as always by the exceptionally wonderful and talented [shark-myths](http://shark-myths.tumblr.com/) \- and go read (or re-read) all [her FOB fic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarredsodeep/pseuds/scarredsodeep) if you need something to read now that this is over!


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The paper he pulls out from under his pillow isn’t normal notebook paper. It’s thicker, and he can almost see the individual fibers. It’s been folded up on itself into a makeshift envelope which is kind of singed around the edges.

 

Late fall chill seeps through the window, sending Pat burrowing deeper under his covers. He cracks one eye open, just barely. It’s not light enough to be awake on a Saturday morning. The faint sounds of his parents moving around downstairs aren’t enough to keep him awake usually, but something is off this morning. He blinks his eyes open a little further, both of them this time. The room’s pretty blurry without his glasses, but he’s used to the blurs. Some of them anyway. There’s something next to the desk that isn’t usually there, and there are way more clothes on the floor than--

“Why are you awake already?” Peter half mumbles, half slurs into the back of his neck.

Oh. Right. (His parents still don’t know what kind of sleepovers they’re agreeing to.)

“I don’t know,” Pat whispers back. He shifts around a bit, trying to find that comfortable spot he’d been in a second ago. Peter shifts with him, like an extra blanket that’s just waiting for Pat to hold still so it can wrap him up again. 

He shoves one hand under his pillow and what the hell?

The paper he pulls out from under his pillow isn’t normal notebook paper. It’s thicker, and he can almost see the individual fibers. It’s been folded up on itself into a makeshift envelope which is kind of singed around the edges.

He stretches to reach his glasses on the nightstand without dislodging Peter too much. Peter mumbles discontentedly but seems to go back to sleep.

The singeing hasn’t reached the inside, though the handwriting isn’t exactly legible when he’s just woken up. It takes him a minute to work out what it says, but after a few lines, he’s grinning widely and giggling a little to himself.

“Shhhhh.” Peter pats at his chest. “So loud, Pat. Sleeping.”

“I know, I know. Sorry.” He sets the paper on his nightstand, underneath his glasses, and rolls over. “All done, go back to sleep.”

Peter leans his forehead into Pat’s, already mostly asleep again but still smiling. “I like waking up next to you.”

“Me too. Now go back to sleep so you can do it again later.”

“Okay.”

He lets Peter’s breathing lull him back to sleep. 

  
  


_ Pat, _

_ I don’t know if this letter will reach you. We aren’t sure if this spell works across universes. But I thought you’d like to know what happened to us...  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's that, y'all. Thank you for reading, thank you for sharing posts, thank you for kudoing and commenting and generally making me feel like this thing that got out of hand did so in a good way.
> 
> I make absolutely zero promises about a timeline for a Coral Fixation follow up....but it is percolating in my brain. Ask me about those boys every now and again - it'll help. :)
> 
> (Mood board as always by the most fabulous [shark-myths](http://shark-myths.tumblr.com/)

**Author's Note:**

> Please come shout at me on [my tumblr](http://www.leyley09.tumblr.com/) or [my twitter](https://twitter.com/leyley09) about this or a wide variety of other topics! I can also be reached at the email address in my profile.
> 
> Aaannnddd... if you're into that sort of thing, there is a [companion playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/leyley09fic/playlist/2doPVQUf4MRrnvKhn4w05K) on Spotify. It is arranged in a specific order so you'll get the "best" experience that way, but you can listen to it on shuffle and it's fine. (I checked).
> 
> (Also please let me know at any point if the pictures / links aren't working properly. I'm better at writing than I am at html.)


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